Why do we believe in things that are not actually there?

One recent commenter was rather eager to engage with me so that he could lay out the details of secret messages contained within the bible. I’ve taken a hard pass on that one.

I’m not the only one that took that same hard pass.

The secret bible-code guy is disappointed that nobody is taking him up on his offer and has written a medium posting mulling over the lack of interest. He writes under the title “Why No One Cares about Secret Bible Messages”

My primary reason is this, and I’m not alone in thinking this — There are no secret messages in the bible, and I quite honestly don’t have the time or energy to commence a game of whack-o-mole on that topic.

I will perhaps mull over the topic a bit and use it as a launchpad to illustrate something rather fasinating about us humans. The key question is this — what is it about us that make us prone to seeing things that are not actually there at all?

I don’t of course mean hallucinations, but instead I’m referring to our ability to not only detect patterns within random noise, but to also cobble up grand conspiracies out of totally random events.

I don’t exclude myself from this. That’s because it is part of who we are, we are all at risk. Being aware of this and why we are like this can really help us to work out what is really true and what has successfully fooled some.

Secret Bible Knowledge

The “Secret Bible Knowledge” claim is very old. It is also a great illustration of what I’m talking about.

You can take almost any bible verse and then crowbar in almost any meaning that you wish. This is done by slicing and dicing things in whatever way is needed to get you from Verse X to Meaning Y.

I’m not suggesting fraud, but rather that it is a very sincere joining up of completely random dots to create a picture out of nothing.

What is fasinating about this is that you can do this with almost any text. To illustrate the mechanics of it, here is a link to an article by a skeptic that does exactly this with the Divinely inspired Holy Text, Moby Dick …

Scientific miracles mentioned in Moby dick that cannot be told by a human decades ago.

Those scientific miracles are being confirmed today by the scientists.

Osteoporosis: “It was in Queen Anne’s time that the bone was in its glory” [..] (Chapter lxxv — THE RIGHT WHALE’S HEAD — CONTRASTED VIEW)

Evolution: “That all creatures of the land are of their kind in the sea”[…] (Chapter lviii — BRIT)

Red Nebula: “Stubb longed for vermillion star” […]

Big Bang: “and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line” [..] (Chapter lx — THE LINE)

What can I say except to suggest that prophet Herman Melville could not have known such modern facts. He was very obviously divinely inspired. If you don’t believe in the divineness of Melville then clearly you, as an unbeliever, are too blind to see this “Miracle”.

Rinse and repeat with the Bible, the Quran, and also any other text you wish.

You really don’t have to look very hard to find many of the other examples. Here are some references from Wikipedia that you can check out …

• Bible Code — It covers it all in great detail and explains why it has no credability.
• Quran Code — Yes, the same again, but for the Quran

If you have enough random data points then you can tease out secret meanings. Big wordy religious texts that are very open to interpretation are ideal.

Another variation on this pattern matching from random data is that the alignment of ancient monuments is hailed by some as “evidence” of some ancient psi-energy power grid … except of course if you ran with that methodology using the location every Starbucks then you can cobble up the exact same claim.

Archaeologist Richard Atkinson, the guy who excavated Stonehenge, was so fed up having the ancient monument ley line claim tossed his direction that he famously created “Telephone Box Ley Lines” and also “Public Toilet Ley Lines” as a rebuttal. He also went with epic eye rolls whenever the claim popped up.

Why do we do this?

Those detecting such patterns are not lying, but instead are quite sincere. They really do see the patterns that they claim to have detected.

The essence of it all is this — we humans have been naturally selected to have a very powerful pattern matching skill. Sitting between your ears is an immensely powerful pattern matching engine.

This ability gives our species a very distinct survival advantage. We have been naturally selected to be like this. Our ancestors, those that survived and thrived, are those that could detect patterns in the weather, patterns in the landscape, and patterns that flagged up danger. It enabled them to find food and water, and also avoid becoming lunch for something else.

Those that did not have this pattern matching skill did not survive.

Picture in your mind in a time long past a rustling noise in the long grass. It means predators are stalking, so avoid and rapidly move away. Don’t climb a tree because they can also climb. They can also wait until you drop, just get slowly away.

But wait, it was just the wind. That’s a false positive, but no big deal because you still survive.

The baggage we carry via this naturally selected skill also means that we end up detecting stuff that is not actually there. That’s a real hassle. Because the skill also has a very potent survival advantage, and the false positives generally don’t impact our survival, the false positives have become part of the human experience.

Can you really see things that are not there?

Indeed yes, here are a few great visual examples. You know very consciously that what you are seeing is not what your visual cortext is telling you is there …

If you would like to see more of these, then just google the word “Pareidolia”.

On and on, rabbits in clouds, faces on Mars, and Jesus on toast.

You can also not see things that are there

In the above, stare at the green dot in the middle.

Some or all of the yellow dots, that really are there and remain there, will vanish.

This vanishing happens because your brain is prioritising motion information. The term is “Motion-induced blindness”

Bottom Line

We can all be fooled into detecting patterns of things that are not there. There are no exceptions to this, our brains are structured to do this.

This is why conspiracy claims, alien claims, ghost claims, and much more will continue to thrive.

The only way we can be truly sure if something is really there is if we can verify it objectively. This is because the human subjective experience is one that can be very easily fooled.

There are honest liars who leverage the ease with which we can be fooled — magicians and illusionists. They have made an entire career just fooling you. You know it is just a trick, they tell you it is just a trick, and then they proceed to fool you.

The problem we face are the fake Psychics, false prophets, conspiracy claiments, and con men who also do the same, but claim it is all real.

Doubt is your friend, not your enemy.

One more time — you can be fooled, we all can. The more sure you are that you can’t, the easier it is to con you.