Seems the folks down in Australia are getting a little of the old holy-image-appears-on-random-object-Christians-start-acting-like-total-whack-jobs fun of their own as of late. So says The Sydney Morning Herald:
Hundreds of believers flocked to the Coogee Beach headland yesterday to witness what they say is an apparition of the Virgin Mary.
Scores more hiked up the cliff path to touch, kiss and pray to the post which over the past few days has been transformed into something of a shrine, with pictures of the virgin, rosary beads and flowers piled around the white-washed fence.
Some wept, others sang, most prayed. As the sunlight reflected off a crook in the fence throughout the afternoon, hundreds claimed they could discern the shape of a veiled figure, and most agreed it was “Our Lady”.
They kissed a fence post?! Do they not realize that dogs tend to urinate on fence posts? I suppose that’s a little better than rubbing their naked asses against it.
This is one of those things about Christians that I just don’t understand. First off, why would Jesus and his Mother spend so much time drawing pictures of themselves into various random objects such as trees, fence posts, office building windows, or whatever other random inanimate object happens to be around at the time when they could do a much better job of letting people know they really exist by, say, materializing in the middle of the Today show set and performing an undeniable miracle such as making Al Roker actually interesting, or at least entertaining, to watch? Huh? Is that too much of a miracle for the King of Kings to pull off? I realize I’m asking a lot here.
No, instead we get nothing but pathetic doodles that have less artistic merit than something produced by a blind epileptic quadriplegic. Artistically speaking, Jesus should stick to turning water into wine and leave the art stuff to the professionals.
Secondly (yeah, I did have more questions), why the hell when one of these shoddy self-portraits appear do all the Christians in the immediate vicinity feel they have to:
A) rush immediately to the site in question
B) touch, rub, kiss, fondle, molest, pray, cry, or faint
C) generally make a nuisance of themselves?
They do that by clogging streets, leaving various “gifts” (someone eventually has to pick that shit up), trampling people’s lawns and just generally not doing anything productive or important despite all the problems they cause by being there. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
When was the last time you heard of a bunch of Jews freaking out because a vague image of some holy figure of their’s showed up on someone’s kreplach? How the last time you heard about a load of Muslims spazzing because one of them saw the face of Mahomet appear in the pattern of the wood grain of some random door someplace? You never hear about that sort of thing.
Occasionally the Hindus will make a big deal out of a statue of one of their various Gods they have supposedly drinking milk, but that’s about the only other religious group I can think of that has anything close to what the Christians are constantly reporting and it’s about a dumb as the idea of Jesus drawing bad pictures of himself everywhere.
Whatever. There are days when I’m feeling particularly evil that I just know there’s a great set of pranks to be pulled using this affinity of Christians to practically wet themselves over this sort of thing. One of these days I may have to see if I can pull it off.
That may be as it may, but whether or not Catholics/Protestants/whatever are Christians is a topic more suited to religious forums.
The long and short of it, though, is that most members of the audience couldn’t care less about the apologia being lobbed between Christian denominations.
Kara, Catholics are Christians. A different flavor of Christian than yourself, but still followers of Christ, some more devoted than others.
The whole Mary thing got started prior to the Crusades, not that religious imperialism didn’t give it a boost.
There are endless examples of how evangelical Christianity picks and chooses its bible verses too, so chill out.
lmao nice post!
Hi.
Thanks very much for being one of those who run sites that are based on reality, not fairytales. I read about 1/3 of the posts on your site – whilst I found it heartening that you argued so reasonably and cogently against a belief in the irrational, I was profoundly disturbed by the implacable cretinous stupidity of the depressingly large number of credulous idiots (with their moronically psychotic anecdotes of miracles and apparitions) who clearly believe in the innate superiority of a lifestyle based on an abnegation of reality. And these people, and their ilk, can not only vote but also RUN a government that can shoot atomic missiles around the world. Bloody amazing!
i don’t see any mary in that picture, all i see is a shadow. i think they are grasping at something to believe in so much, they see what they want to see.
In response: Those people you mentioned are catholics not Christians. I hope you do get your facts right.
John, go study up on the history of Christianity. I hope you do get your facts right.
Subtle knuckle draggers give us a run for our money though.
Slightly different shade of the same ugly color, John.
fuck all you religious fucks.
The northern end of Coogee Beach was renamed Dolphin Point to honour those who lost their lives in the Bali bombings of 2002. Of the 202 people killed, 88 were Australian. Of the 88, 20 were residents of Coogee Beach. Of those 20, 6 were members of the Coogee Dolphins’ rugby team.
In October 2003, on the first anniversary of the terrorist attack at the Sari Club in Bali, a memorial was held at the newly renamed Dolphin Point where a wonderful memorial sculpture was unveiled.
Interestingly, two months later, an optical illusion is seen in the form a figure, Christian believers claim to be the Virgin Mary. The fence from which this illusion sprang, was there for years, yet only after the site became a memorial, did the vision appear.
So what if it’s an illusion? So what if the Roman Catholic church does not officially recognize it?
In their grief and sorrow, some of the survivors, families and friends of those killed, found solace in this phenomenon.
There are people in this world who find solace in cinnamon buns that they think resemble Mother Theresa. That doesn’t make them any less of a fruitcake for doing so.
Les says:
Les, have you never lost someone you loved and tried to put it into some sort of perspective or to make sense of it?
Is your heart so hardened that you would deny mourners their right to grieve their way?
It doesn’t make them crazy. Misguided perhaps, but not crazy.
Faith, if you check the archives you’ll find the answer to your first question is: Yes, I have lost someone I loved and tried to put it into perspective. However I didn’t resort to seeing images in objects that weren’t there to do so.
I can forgive grieving people their lapses, but a lot of the people that were showing up to bask in the mystery of the Virgin Mary fence post don’t have that excuse. In fact I’d argue that most of the people who show up in throngs to witness the latest example of pareidolia don’t have that excuse.
Les says:
Sorry for your loss. Awesome eulogy; articulate, emotive.
In their thousands were mourners, believers, the curious and the skeptical. The breakdown of each group can’t really be known but I acknowledge your point.
I hope you don’t feel like I’m picking on you, Faith. I don’t mean to come across like that.
I’d like to think I’m a fairly empathic fellow and I don’t tend to begrudge people their security blankets until they become problematic or harmful to others. Some of this stuff is so silly, however, that I just have to point out how silly it is. If people insist on clinging to it I’ll let them, but I feel like I need to at least point out how silly they’re being.
Les says:
Umm, no, I didn’t get that impression at all. We’re good.
If you do, Les, and then reveal the joke, rest assured that the gulled will say that you were doing the Lord’s work, and that the joke is on you.
Like the occasional crop-circle artist who is told they couldn’t possibly have produced the artifact in the field.
It’s a game you can’t win. It’s not just us who can’t tell the difference between TBs and satire anymore.
Poe’s law strikes again? (Thanks DoF).