Bloggers chime in

Falterer adds his 2¢ to the melee:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation had the opportunity to contribute to a Christmas display at the Washington State Capitol, and squandered that opportunity on this callous, sententious, dogmatic piece of dissent. It’s intended as a protesting middle finger to the State for permitting such displays in a public building, but it sounds more like a Christmas speech from the fascist dictator in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta (“England prevails, gentlemen!”) It’s a bitterly cold message.

The problem here isn’t just that atheists come off as killjoys, but that they also come off as arrogant, self-alienating bullies on a merciless mission of cultural cleansing. The nativity scene beside this plaque may represent a superstition believed only by Christians, but it’s represented through the universally positiveimage of a mother nurturing her newborn child; and of an especially humble and vulnerable beginning for a legendary community leader known for parables about compassion and kindness. Beside the manger, the FFRF’s plaque reads like a heavy-handed decree from a modern day Herod, bent on ridding culture of any influence it deems unfit. What positive message does it send? What wholesome insight does it have to offer? That there’s no god? Oh. Goody. Merry Christmas to you too. READ MORE

… while gnomerroamer adds his interesting and angrier 2¢, calling us new-agey (um… thanks?):

However, some Atheists feel the need to play into the Christians’ childish games and apologize.  But there are also those, like myself, who see absolutely no compelling reason to apologize for the sign at the capitol. First, because the sign itself was merely a passive statement of principle, and its bindingness is subject to one’s own selection, much like the advertisements to which we subject ourselves thousands of times a day with total submission and complacency. The simian, angst-ridden Christian reaction to the sign, to mere words, is the best and most abundant persuasion of an Atheist worldview. But far more importantly, contrary to other Atheists, I only regret that the sign was the least offensive among a range of other possibilities in comparison to the perennial crimes of Christianity.

However, I honestly don’t care about the Christians who object to the sign as much as I object to the New-Agey, pop-culture Atheists who apologize for it. Granted, as stated before, Atheism is inherently pluralistic. If there is no god, then except through reason and evidence there is no constraining authority to coerce one’s interpretation of the world. Not even an Atheist “group,” as that is an oxymoron. In such a way, Atheism is inherently individualistic, following from the fact that human experience is irreducibly individual. In a classical Atheist’s view, institutional organizations inevitably intend toward the extinction of individual experience and the spontaneous moral sensitivity that sustains and drives us as the marginally intelligent primates that we are. For this reason, it is offensive that some Atheist “groups” have sought to apologize or otherwise mitigate their responsibility for the sign, as their statements make the presumption that they have some magically realized ability to speak for the “whole” of Atheism, which is contradictory. They simply do not. READ MORE