If faith always appealed to you, but you’re a rationally minded-scientist who can’t get past that big leap, there’s a new alternative to church or synagogue worship. Head over to The Atheon, a secular temple devoted to scientific worship.
Delivering spiritual fulfillment through exposure to the latest research in fields ranging from cosmology to quantum mechanics, the Atheon offers a nondenominational alternative to theocentric religions…Our credo is to make faith rational.
The Atheon is located in Berekeley, and “features stained glass windows patterened to show the cosmic microwave background radiation, revealing the origin of the universe as imaged by NASA. 
Central to the liturgy is a canon for three cosmic voices titled, ‘Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?'”
It’s so interesting to me that the artist responsible for the Atheon (Jonathan Keats) saw religion as exemplified by stained glass windows and a canon. Though both are nice elements of the church/synagogue experience, I think faith and worship is much more complex and interesting than that. I can’t imagine anyone being really satisfied with a stained glass window and canon based faith. I’m especially disappointed because I visited the Atheon online, “where it can be encountered as a desktop shrine.” I was hoping for some glorious piece of artwork and gorgeous sounds, but it just looked messy and sounded whiny. Granted, that can be said about many shuls I’ve been to, as well, but I left the site feeling pretty underwhelmed. I like to think of myself as a rational person, but so far I’m unimpressed by the sheer tediousness of the Atheon’s take on faith. Two thumbs way down.
