Warning: May contain traces of skepticism

There is a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia, it concerns the very human propensity to see significance where there is none, and as far I can tell it is the founding principle of most religious faiths. Pareidolia is seeing the image of a horse etched in cloud formation, or a potato that looks like the left nipple of Moses. Now, I can understand the need to see a pattern or a higher purpose which governs all we see and do, after all it's far more reassuring to live in a happy delusion of order than to face the very obvious truth that the universe is a chaotic existence of discord and random unfathomable cruelty, and heck, I love cloud-gazing as much the next feckless waster, but the same childlike naivety which harmlessly renders clouds equine turns bedroom shadows into lurking demons and the faces of innocents into enemies and infidels.

Anyway, I've decided to publish a book with the pareidoliac in mind, the working title is Where is Your God Now? It will be a work in the same vein as those books in which you have to find Wally or Carmen Sandiego in an expansive crowd scene, only instead of quirky vistas of Ancient Egypt or farcical beach scenarios replete with comical characters in period dress or bathing costumes, the reader will have to locate the titular "God" (a bland, anonymous grandfatherly figure in white robes with a flowing beard, like Wizard Whitebeard from the aforementioned Where's Wally? series only with less character) in harrowing scenes of mass devastation and human exodus; famines, wars and natural disasters, a different one for each page.

The only problem is that there is no God, he is a relative abstract concept (plus no publisher is going to want to pick up any book which prints the image of an Abrahamic patriarch after that whole Danish newspaper fiasco) and so it doesn't matter how hard the reader pores over the book in search of that cheeky and elusive deity, he's not printed on any page. And the final two pages of the book will feature a double spread Magic Eye optical illusion which under close scrutiny will yield the image of a huge hand with an extended middle digit, just to subtly hammer home the point of the book.

I'm hoping to have the book in the library of every faith school by this time next year.

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