At any rate, I didn’t say making sweeping, polemical generalizations made them false. I said it was pathetic and forensically bankrupt.

Oh, wait–I didn’t see your “get out of burden-of-proof free” card. Boy, is my face red…

Also, they have no sense of irony.

…I see what you did there.

It’s a perfect example of what we expect (and often receive) from the religious – dishonesty, arrogance, and poor taste.

You know what else I hate about religious people? Their pathetic, forensically bankrupt tendency to resort to broad, sweeping, polemical generalizations about their ideological opponents. Dishonest, arrogant, and in poor taste indeed.

Also, they have no sense of irony.

We must now kidnap the Holy Family from the nativity scene and hold them hostage until the sign is returned unharmed. We can exchange them in a suspenseful scene with two people approaching each other on a bridge, unarmed and carrying the sign and the figurines.

But snark aside, I do of course realize that not all atheists are, for example, humanists. The “Humanist Winter Solstice Not-So-Holi-Day Creed o’ Nauseating Optimism” was merely a quickly churned-out example, and seemed to reflect closely enough sign-maker Dan Barker’s self-proclaimed beliefs.

It takes all kinds of signs and messages because there are all kinds of people out there. We (meaning the FFRF) needs to target the theists that care about the separation of church and state, the seldom-theists that need some intellectual provocation, the closeted non-theists that need support, the atheists that don’t get involved, and they also need to poke journalists to talk about the message.

All kinds of people need all kinds of signs.

a) The only thing connecting atheists is a lack of belief.

a) Atheists are also connected by Common Descent–but your point is taken. The belief, though, that the world would be better off without religion does seem to be held by a significant enough majority of atheists that making the generalization isn’t criminally unfair. But perhaps I misperceive this. At any rate, it’s to that seeming preference that I refer when speaking of the atheist “cause”. My apologies for any misguided overgeneralizations. To amend, then, the beginning of the paragraph you quoted: “Those who find objections to the sign’s inclusion unreasonable and/or unwarranted undermine the propagation of theistic non-belief (and this may very well be their goal, since “the only thing connecting atheists is a lack of belief”, and many atheists may very well yearn for the universal dominance of theism)…”

b) The goal should not be parity but separation of church and state.

b) I only hope you can find other atheists who feel the same way; as far as I know, you’re all connected only by lack of belief, so you might have quite a search on your hands. At any rate, that’s a Constitutional discussion for another time.

c) Do you seriously think that atheists really really want a sign?

c) Do you seriously think that I really really said that? I was simply addressing Mr. Mehta’s discusson of the issue of parity (and the implication that objections made to the FFR display constitute a double-standard). I assumed it was appropriate to address the primary assertion made in the initial blog post, but I have been known to be presumptuous (see “a)”).