(May 3, 2015 at 12:28 pm)AdamLOV Wrote:(May 3, 2015 at 4:14 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: There is nothing to stop atheists believing in paranormal things or out of body stuff.
A lot don't but it is not required.
A lot of Muslims drive white BMWs but that is not required as part of Islam.
The fact that something is not explicitly required from a group does not mean that there are not implicit requirements. What I propose would be that the majority of atheists are expected by their peers to not merely disbelieve in God, but in many other religious-quasi religious constructs, such as ghosts or demons. This in no way entails that every single atheist will not believe in such phenomena. Rather, I am suggesting that we distinguish between hard atheism of the purist variety (generalized disbelief) and more heterogenous forms of atheism (selective disbelief).
A poll that I ran seems to suggest that only 15% of atheists consider atheism to require being of your 'hard' variety.
https://atheistforums.org/thread-14681.html