Pattern Recognition, Paganism, and the Catholic Church

Just a short while ago, my mother posted the following on facebook ...

"AOCDRNICG TO RSCHEEARCH AT CMABRIGDE UINERVTISY, IT DSENO'T MTAETR WAHT OERDR THE LTTERES IN A WROD ARE, THE OLNY IPROAMTNT TIHNG IS TAHT THE FRSIT AND LSAT LTEETR BE IN THE RGHIT PCLAE. TIHS IS BCUSEAE THE HUAMN MNID DEOS NOT RAED ERVEY LTETER BY ISTLEF, BUT THE WROD AS A WLOHE."

Can you make sense out of it? I can. As human beings we generally have a great capacity to recognise patterns, sometimes (like the above) where those patterns aren't even there.

What do I mean? Ask yourself, 'what is the first word in the quotation above'?

If you answered 'According', you'd be wrong!
If you answered 'Aocdrnicg', you'd also be wrong!
The correct answer is 'To'.

Am I being a little pedantic in making that point? Yes. Unfortunately one must to make the point I'm trying to make.

Our brains have the ability to recognise 'Aocdrnicg' as 'According', even though IT ISN'T!

A very similar thing often happens when people attack the Catholic Church, or traditional Christianity in general with charges that "Easter is a Pagan celebration", Christians worship on Sundays, and a great deal of other things.

What they do, is point out the similarity between, for example, the pagan practice of worshipping on Sunday, and the Christian practice of worshipping on Sunday, and then ASSUME that because they can recognise the similarity, that they are indeed the same thing, when in point of fact, they are not.