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Notes -
What is the most sensible explanation for jesus appearing on a piece of toast? I thought it was just people pattern matching random chance.
Aliens, obviously.
The example I was thinking about is a news story I heard some years ago about people setting up a shrine - I think in Latin America - with a Jesus on a toast with details way beyond the capabilities of a mere toaster. To my eyes, somebody obviously helped along with a burning needle or something similar (or just directly used a burning iron with a Jesus stamp form). Either way, I could only shake my head at the so-called critics claiming "it's coincidence" and the believers rightfully pointing out that it is almost physically impossible to be so - therefore, god. The people running the shrine clearly seemed to make some money off it.
Now that you made me write it out though, I realize that I nowadays would probably think that the critics are probably also simply paid to look silly. I'll leave it to the judgement of the reader whether I've not been cynical enough back when I was younger, or whether I've become too cynical by now.
Oh yeah apart from aliens of course. No, the direction my mind went was that statistically unlikely - even impossible - things actually happen with some frequency, and using stats as the basis of your reasoning that God/aliens did it is a misapplication of statistics. But I was thinking of the more mundane version where it is just wishful thinking, not the engineered variety.
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