“How does God find the time?”

It’s all out there: a galaxy cluster pictured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Picture: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Please don’t demand a recount, but according to the latest census there are 400 billion galaxies out there – with up to 10 trillion orbiting planets. That’s before we add in God-knows-how-many (we’ll return to God shortly) of those possible and impossible parallel universes.

Which makes it most impressive that God can keep an eye on all 6 billion of us, taking a personal interest in our behaviour. In particular, according to our religions, our sex lives. How does God find the time?

And it doesn’t stop with us. Though only our human species is made in God’s image, we’re told God sees every falling sparrow. Across those 400 billion galaxies with their 10 trillion planets.

God even keeps a stern eye on those who dare not to believe in God. I know this from personal experience. True story. Some decades ago I was on a Qantas flight between Greece and Italy. They were still cleaning up after the massacre at Athens airport when we visited – and bombs on planes were a constant concern – so my fellow passengers were feeling fraught.

As we prepared to land at Leonardo da Vinci Airport our captain cheerfully announced: “We’re right over the Vatican!” And at that very nanosecond there was a very loud BANG. All the lights went out!

The plane swerved violently! Lots of screaming! Clearly a bomb! Even the pilot sounded unnerved as he sought to calm us with the good news. “We’ve only been struck by lightning!” Whereupon, despite the wives’ tale that it never happens, we were struck again.

Adams Versus God

After a safe landing, for which the other passengers thanked God, I was informed that two holes had been burnt into the fuselage. Both exactly where I’d been sitting. And here’s where it gets a little spooky. That very week I’d published my book Adams versus God, defending my lifelong atheism. Obviously I’d just got my first bad review.

Yes, I’ve only myself to blame. To make the event even more theologically inevitable the book’s cover parodied that vast and venerable painting on a Vatican ceiling. The famous finger of fate reaching down to touch the digit of a naked me.

With God noting every falling sparrow, what did I expect? The contrarian cosmologist Fred Hoyle coined the term “Big Bang” as a term of ridicule. Fred was a “steady-stater” who argued the universe had always existed and didn’t need some silly orgasmic “singularity” to start things off – some unprecedented ejaculation to seed infinite space with trillions of planets.

But these days the Big Bang is accepted science, like the superiority of the monarchy over a republic or the LNP’s ability to manage our economy.

So we circle back to the celestial census figures. Some leading astrophysicists still believe that we may be alone – citing the probability of planetary life in a galaxy as “somewhere between zero and one”. But I reckon God is far too energetic for that and enjoys experimentation – so that intelligent life abounds. Not necessarily as intelligent as Albert Einstein but more intelligent than, to choose a random example, Trump.

Despite the warning from God related above, I remain an atheist in my foxhole of mortality. And I can’t help but wonder how faiths are doing out there. Atheism has hardly laid a glove on faith – no need to bother. Religion is doing its best to destroy religion. Check the census figures.