Wired.com : How did the Atheon begin? Jonathon Keats : I heard about the Beyond Belief conference in 2006 . Richard Dawkins was there, and Steven Weinberg, and Neil Degrasse Tyson. They were trying to figure out what science might do to provide an alternative to religion. There wasn't a consensus, but there was momentum towards the idea that science could do everything religion could, that it could be everything religion had been. What would the form be, I wondered, of a church to science? What would happen within that church, in the most literal terms? And what would the fallout be if religion became scientific, and science a surrogate for religion? Wired.com : Do you actually take the worship of the science seriously, or is it a parody? Keats : I hope not. If it's interpreted as one, I will have failed. It's not a parody any more than a thought experiment is a parody. Wired.com : Are you promoting science as a religion? Keats : No. I'm just the cheapest labor availabl...