Some people say God is everywhere, but that doesn't explain why some people see images of Jesus in toast, pizza or even the side of a cliff.
But science does.
Researchers at Northwestern University led by Joel Voss say the human brain is wired to look for familiarity and meaning in the most abstract squiggles.
Here's why: Our brains automatically identify similar objects and then organize them according to type. That’s why we can look at a baseball cap and a fedora and know right away that both are hats, Voss explained to MSNBC.com
To arrive at this finding, researchers asked 10 volunteers to look at squiggles while lying under a brain scanner and the rate the meaningfulness of each squiggle.
What they found is that when the volunteers saw the images for a second time, they had already catalogued these squiggles as faces or animals or something else that was meaningful to them and, therefore, had no reason to analyze the shapes again.
So far, science has yet to explain a more pressing issue: How a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich featuring Jesus could actually sell for $28,000 on eBay.
However, modern technology has made it so a person doesn't have to make their brain work hard to see Jesus in toast. There are at least two products available that make it simple: The Jesus Toaster, which imprints the image of the almighty onto bread, and a New York man is attempting to raise funds via Kickstarter for a sandwich press called the Grilled Cheesus that also allows believers to turn piety into paninis.
PHOTOS: SACRED SIGHTINGS?
