When I was just a little tyke, I was very troubled at the idea that religions and churches could have tax exempt status. I imagined that someone in Washington must have the job of deciding which religions were correct enough -- or at least, not wrong enough -- to deserve treatment as "real" religions and which ones were left out. And you know, more than thirty years later, that still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

At the time, the problem seemed all the more immediate because in our small town, the block we lived on had no less than three freaking enormous churches on it...and my family belonged to none of them. For what it's worth, I'll add that of all the faiths represented in town, only the Catholic priests could not have been any nicer to us -- the only Jewish family in town -- and to this day I still object vocally to any anti-Catholic bigotry because of their kindness and respect. But I digress.

As an atheist/agnostic/apatheist, I've had a longtime fantasy that we need a real "church" of nonbelievers, if only to balance the playing field in terms of legal rights, real estate taxes, and other assets. The "conscientious objector" is probably the most discriminated-against subgroup in America and it's just not right that we have to pay extra for the privilege.

Acceptance as a "religion" by the general public seems to call for certain trappings and material holdings such as church buildings, symbols, and other aspects of modern PR. It's really little different than creating a "brand identity" for a product: "I use Protestantism because it gets my soul whiter!" My fantasy "atheist church" could have Christopher Reeve as a "saint" and the books of Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan and Bertrand Russell as "holy texts." We could have weekly "services" with discussions of Darwinism. And we'd encourage schisms so that people would leave and form their own reactionary splinter groups, thereby spreading the tax-exempt wealth ever further.

If you don't like this idea...what would you do instead? What would your "church" of disbelief be like?