The devout atheist

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 03, 2012

Gotta love the idea of building a temple to atheism, and the behind the project. The misguided millionaire who’s funding the venture believes that “you can build a temple to anything that's positive and good.”

I suppose you can—if you have the money, and nothing else to do with it. But why? Apple pie is positive and good, but I don’t worship it. (There was that one time, after eating too much, that I had a nightmare about a building made of apple pie. But I don’t think it was a temple.)

“That could mean a temple to love, friendship, calm, or perspective,” says our hero. Then you’d have a temple built to an abstraction. Why not build a temple to the Pythagorean Theorem—which, in comparison with atheism, has the advantage of being true?

And what sort of temple do you build to honor atheism? Most appropriate, I think, would be a temple that doesn’t exist.

Still this project is a useful reminder that Christians do not worship an abstraction. A temple only makes sense if it’s dedicated to someone—or better, to Someone.