Jackson Christ

This is absurd.

People claim that Jackson Pollock hid his name in a painting. I can't even begin to explain how silly this is. For one thing, after learning what I was supposed to be looking for "Jackson Pollock," I went through the image and found the name. I then clicked on the full-size image of the painting to see where it was and, lo and behold, none of the letters I had found corresponded to the letters that supposedly exist. More interesting, many of the letters I found are more distinct than the ones listed. That means that if I found the name in the chaos, and someone else found the name in entirely different lines in the chaos, it either means that Pollock hid his name many times, or there's nothing there.

An experiment: I will try and find my name "Aaron Martin-Colby," in the chaos. It took me less than two minutes to do it.

There was a window near my local Stop & Shop that had an image of Bozo the Clown in it at certain times to day.

People see Jesus in almost anything.

After the DaVinci Code, people see secrets and codes in almost anything. If you're simply looking for patterns, post hoc analysis of anything is going to yield lots of crap that seems to make sense and be significant, but in all likelihood isn't. It's called pareidolia, and it's illustrated perfectly in this episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit.

While on the Subject

While on the subject of faith, I was just recently watching The Prince of Egypt, and ignoring the trillion-or-so inconsistencies in the story, Moses has a funny line. When discussing the power of Pharaoh over the Jews. He says that he can take their freedom and their lives but he can't take their faith. I think William Wallace would disagree, but still.

I take issue with it because, with the events in the story, and especially with their representation in the movie, it's not faith! There's tons of shit that is actually happening to prove the existence of God and to prove that he's pissed off in a big way. Faith in God is basically a modern thing. Back then, God was screwing around with stuff on Earth all the time. His existence, assuming the accuracy of the events, was proved by the gateway to Zool that opened up in the clouds. Or the whole river that turned to blood. Or the stunning coincidence that all the first born sons die on the same night.

That's all pretty convincing evidence that God is out there and is good on his word. Faith is a requirement now because God has apparently given up proving to everyone that he exists. Instead of pillars of fire and oceans parting, he prefers to have various official representatives of him appear in tacos and the such.

So yeah, when people in the Bible talk about faith, it doesn't make any sense because in the context of the stories, faith doesn't exist. It's not needed. God's right there. Just say hi.

Well only say hi in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God might just get vengeful on your ass for bugging him.