Attending Church

Photo by: Alastair Forbes

Miranda stood in the huge parking lot behind the Grace Universal Lord Chapel. A sign at the entrance read:

God and Aliens attends our sermons. Why won’t you?

Miranda spat, “Seriously? God and Aliens? I can’t wait to blow the whistle on this guy’s lies.”

Jerome, her cameraman said, “Why don’t we infiltrate the church. Video the service. When nothing special happens, that’s your evidence of deceit.”

“I’m not attending any church. I’m a rational thinker.”

“There he is!” pointed Jerome

Miranda dashed to the pastor with Jerome hot on her heels. “Pastor Mariposa!” called Miranda. “Your sign claims that God and Aliens attend your services. What do you say to allegations of false advertising?”

Mariposa just smiled with his sun-beaten face. “Nothing. God does attend.”

“So you’re saying that god and his robes float down from the clouds to sit in a pew?”

“Don’t be daft. There’s no such thing. God is an emergent property of the universe. Look, it takes 100 billion neurons to create sentience in a human being. Now imagine our Milky Way galaxy contains 100 billion stars all communicating via gravity waves. That’s an information network like the human mind. Let’s consider further that there are billions of galaxies out there, each containing billions of stars.” Mariposa raised a finger. “All these connections mean a super-intelligence must emerge. The self-organizing properties we see in nature make an emergent intelligence inevitable. THAT is God. We are all stardust, and that means we are all composed of God. God is within us, so God attends the services.”

Miranda deadpanned, “Whatever. What about the aliens? You claim…”

“Miranda!” shouted Jerome. “Look!”

A creature like a spider, five-feet across, walked to the church entrance. The shimmering colors of its carapace gleamed as it waved a feeler.

“Welcome, Ahan’terphil,o’cilbireedon,ko,” waved Mariposa.

“Long name,” groaned Miranda.

“That’s his nick-name,” shrugged Mariposa.

A creature like a purple kangaroo followed it, except it had an eagle’s beak and dragonfly eyes. It waved a paw.

“Welcome, N’Ar!” waved Mariposa. He whispered to Miranda, “He prefers we use his full name and title.”

Miranda started walking to the church entrance.

Jerome jogged beside her and whispered, “I thought we weren’t infiltrating the church?”

Miranda stared determinedly, “I’m not infiltrating.”
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Author’s Notes:

From the UCSB Science Line: “There are about 10 billion galaxies in the observable universe! The number of stars in a galaxy varies, but assuming an average of 100 billion stars per galaxy means that there are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 1 billion trillion) stars in the observable universe! Notice that I have been saying the observable universe. We can only observe parts of the universe that are within 13.7 billion lightyears of earth. This is because the big bang occurred about 13.7 billion years ago. We make observations about distant stars by measuring the light that reaches earth and satellites that we have in space. Light from stars farther than 13.7 billion lightyears away has not had time to reach us yet!”
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3775

Written for Sunday Photo Fiction. Look here for the original writing prompt and a blue link to many more stories! https://sundayphotofictioner.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/sunday-photo-fiction-february-20th-2016/