An Atheist Church

Jake caused quite a stir with the concept of Atheism as an organized religion (a much better article than my random link posts). Now an artist in San Francisco is converting a building into something of an Atheist church as part of an exhibition for the Judah L Magnes Museum. From Boing Boing:

Instead of telling the story of baby Jesus, the Atheon’s stained glass windows will show cosmic microwave background radiation made from NASA satellite data. And since the interior of the building is still under construction, templer-goers will have to either pray from the sidewalk or in front of a glowing web site from their computers at home. Keats even made a song of worship; he collaborated with Virginia astronomer Mark Whittle to come up with a canon of sounds from three hypothetical universes called Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

From the museum’s page:

The first project in the Windows series will be The Atheon: A Temple to Science, an installation by Jonathon Keats that calls forth the fusion of science and religion by building a temple for scientific worship—an Atheon. Look into the large vaulted windows of faux stained glass and see the universe as you listen to the accompanying sounds on your cell phone.

It’s funny that the idea of atheists getting together a la religion is so wacky it’s basically being portrayed as novelty art. I’ll take what I can get, though. Once this thing opens I’ll try and get some pictures and more details.