Atheon science temple

From Yenra

Beginning September 27, 2008, a two-story downtown Berkeley, California building named the Atheon will become a temple for the worship of science.

Late in 2007, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats approached the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley with the idea of temporarily installing a prototype Atheon in their newly-acquired downtown building, which was slated for major overhaul. "The building has fourteen-foot-high cathedral-style windows," says chief curator Alla Efimova, "and frankly nothing was planned there during restoration when Jonathon came along." With a grant from UC Berkeley's Chancellor's Community Partnership Fund, construction of the Atheon began.

"The essence of religion is stained glass and song," Mr. Keats says. In the case of the Atheon, the stained glass is patterned to show the cosmic microwave background radiation -- capturing the universe in the first several hundred thousand years of creation -- using NASA's new WMAP satellite data. "The cosmic microwave background is the sky's natural stained glass, our origin story imprinted on the cosmos," explains Mr. Keats. "And now it's visible to us for the first time, glowing through the windows of the Atheon."

The song composed for the Atheon is equally scientific, a canon for three cosmic voices titled "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?" The canon is comprised of sounds pulsating through several hypothetical universes as well as our own living cosmos, musically arranged by Mr. Keats using audio files produced by University of Virginia astronomer Mark Whittle. According to Mr. Keats, "these universes don't provide any answers. If people are to find spirituality in science, it's likely to be by immersing themselves in questions."

Due to construction work inside the new Magnes Museum building, the Atheon will be visible only from the exterior, at the corner of Harold Way and Kittredge Street. The windows will be illuminated nightly until February 1, 2009, and the canon will be audible by cellphone, as well as on the Atheon website at http://www.magnes.org/atheon/

"Eventually there will be an Atheon in every town," anticipates Jonathon Keats. "There will be many different architectures and diverse liturgies. Science will make a fine religion," he predicts. "What remains to be determined is whether this religion will be good science."