Praise Jesus! Or praise the long-haired dude whose outline you can totally see in that piece of burnt rye if you squint, man.

That’s what University of Toronto professor Kang Lee was saying on Thursday after winning an Ig Nobel Prize for a study on “face pareidolia,” the scientific term for when people see the mugs of famous people in clouds, rock formations and the like.

The paper, “Seeing Jesus in toast: Neural and behavioural correlates of face pareidolia,” was written by Kang and a group of researchers, along with partner institutions in China, and published in the journal Cortex.

Ig Noble winners of past years:

• Bra that turns into gas mask wins Ig Nobel Prize

• Beer bottle brawl study brings Ig Nobel prize

Lee and his team found that seeing the Son of God in everyday places was not an indication of nuttiness but a normal part of human perception.

A 2013 BuzzFeed listicle called “22 People Who Found Jesus in Their Food” — documenting Lord-and-Saviour sightings in edibles ranging from bananas to breakfast tacos — suggests how common the illusion can be.

“I saw several reports in the media of people seeing Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Elvis. And people tended to laugh at these kinds of people,” Kang told the Star on Friday. “The reason people laughed at them was because they thought they were crazy.”

The professor could sympathize. As a boy, he saw generic faces in his bed sheets “all the time.”

“If I was religious, I probably would have seen Jesus,” he quipped.

The Ig Nobel Prizes — a spoof of the better-known Scandinavian awards in literature, peace and other fields — have been given out annually since 1991 and are presented by the humorous science magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

Winners are meant to have done research that “makes people laugh and then think,” the journal’s website says.

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