What happens when scientific data is dressed up in religious clothing?
The Atheon is a temple of science. It’s a shrine to rational wonder. It’s conceptual art. To be coldly reductionist, it’s four “stained glass” windows in a building you can’t enter, and a “canon” unlikely to induce humming or foot-tapping. In December, it held a minuscule synod. The Atheon’s creator, Jonathon Keats, is a conceptual artist with a longstanding interest in exploring science and religion as artistic elements, and a flair for publicity. He says the inspiration for creating the Atheon came at a 2006 conference called “Beyond Belief”, at which luminary scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carolyn Porco, and Richard Dawkins extolled the sense of wonder and uplift derived from science as a replacement for religious awe. Keats mused on the idea of science replacing religion. “What would it look like, what would it feel like, what would it sound like?” He concluded that “there perhaps ought to be some sort of temple to science.” He has also said, “The essence of religion is stain
