Las Vegas nonreligious center embraces communal aspects of church

Participants in the weekly Village Potluck gather on April 12, 2017 at The Center for Science and Wonder, 1651 East Sunset Road. The venue serves as a meeting place for atheists, agnostics, humanists and skeptics. (F. Andrew Taylor/View) @FAndrewTPress

Kevin Breen is a fan of the loving community found in church, but he isn’t as thrilled with the concept of God.

A few years ago he met several overlapping groups of like-minded people, and the result is a place where atheists, agnostics, humanists and skeptics can gather and share ideas.

“The Center for Science and Wonder is a radically inclusive, nonreligious, black-box theater and community center that aims to provide the benefits historically provided by religious institutions,” Breen said.

The germ of the idea for the center came from an attempt in fall 2015 by the United Church of Bacon to raise funds to purchase The Slammer, the eclectic former home of outspoken atheist magician Penn Jillette, as a base of operations. The United Church of Bacon is a legal church, based in Las Vegas, but with an international congregation. It is more an activist group than traditional church, and it was formed in part as a protest against organized religion. The plans to buy The Slammer fell through, but the idea of a central location for atheists to meet stuck.

“Probably too many cooks,” said Breen, who was facility manager for the project for a while and lived at The Slammer. “The project never had a clear direction.”

Within a year, Breen leased property at 1651 E. Sunset Road, and monthly meetings started for two separate nonreligious groups, the Las Vegas Sunday Assembly and the Humanist Association of Las Vegas.

“Because there’s a lot of crossover between the groups, one of our biggest problems in telling people what we do here is explaining that there are separate groups here with similar philosophies and an interest in community-building, but each has a different focus,” said Cassandra Cicone, president of Sunday Assembly, director of the Center for Science and Wonder and program director for the Humanist Association of Las Vegas.

She explained that the Center for Science and Wonder, or C-SaW, is both the venue that provides space for the two organizations and the organizer of recurring and special events. The more than 40-year-old Humanist Association of Las Vegas, or HALV, meets for intellectual discussions and lectures. The less than 3-year-old Sunday Assembly is much closer to being a church without God.

“We have singing and day care, and families are encouraged to come,” said Geri Bridges, a member of the Sunday Assembly and the facility manager for C-SaW. “It’s a celebration of life. A big part of the attraction is community.”

Breen said many of the members of the Sunday Assembly were brought up with religion but had bad experiences with it. That isn’t the case for him.

“I remember it fondly,” Breen said. “It was an absolutely miserable experience for me when I realized I was no longer able to accept the premise of God. I desperately wanted to continue to believe in God because not believing gave me this enormous rift between myself and my friends, including my first girlfriend.

Cicone was drawn to the assembly, in part, by the desire for a sense of community for her young daughter.

“I had a couple situations where I tried to find playmates for my daughter and religion came up early and became an issue,” Cicone said. “We needed a community where that wasn’t a problem.”

The center offers a range of programs, meetings and special events, including a weekly potluck; monthly Las Vegas StorySLAM; family movie nights; screenings of documentaries ; and play dates and parent hangouts.

Ashley Smith-Taylor, who manages many of the children’s program for the Sunday Assembly, said, “We’re trying to develop this like any community center, and we want to get where people are at least paying for the supplies. We’re getting by on donations and some paid events, but we need sustaining members who can volunteer their time and/or money to help us build this community.

“No matter what your political beliefs, your background or your education, if you walk through that door a free thinker and you’re looking for community, it’s here,” Smith-Taylor said.

Organizers also hope to draw people who are curious about atheism and agnosticism as a way to normalize attitudes toward them.

“We aren’t robbers, anarchists or crazy people,” Cicone said. “We’re brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers. We’re good people who want the same things everyone else does: community, happiness and success.”

Contact F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 702-380-4532. Follow @FAndrewTPress on Twitter.