As a sarcastic teenager circa 1970 I used to say, “I’ll see it when I believe it.” Offering many examples, some scholarly kibbitzing, a dissent from the Catholic establishment, and few conclusions, Haldane examines the related phenomenon of “pareidolia,” “the perception of patterns where none are intended”---especially when they seem to bear religious significance. The Mother Theresa Cinnamon Bun exemplifies the genre, to which each of us can supply instances not cited here: The Holy Name “written” inside a cross-cut eggplant, the Virgin’s face visible in a sawn-off tree in Brooklyn. (Lexicographer Michael Quinion mentions that an auditory form of pareidolia called “electronic voice phenomena [EVP], in which people claim to hear messages in the random noise of audio recordings.”) Haldane treats testimonies of wonder and awe respectfully (albeit noting the financial benefits such prodigies can bring), and lets experts---and his readers---do the judging. (As for making patterns out of random input, check “Fatter, Taller, and Thirstier Americans,” elsewhere on this site.) Yes, such yearnings do show “people have a great spiritual hunger”---but what snobs call the unwashed masses have, for centuries, run after such specious marvels, when they would not pause fifteen seconds to study frost on a windowpane, its delicate tracery etched by a miraculous combination of fractal mathematics and molecular mechanics. And it would be unkind to point out, like a snarky teenager, that deities who send such pathetic messages to humankind might well be mocking the recipients.