If I were an Atheist

[Mister Agenda]

robvalueDefault atheism cannot be wrong, as it makes no claims.

"We make no claims" is another of my favorite dodges. If no claims, why a media? Why a forum? Why all the arguments? At minimum atheists must make the claim that belief in deity is unsupported by available evidence. I see nothing wrong with making a claim anyway. Ideally, the claim then stands or falls on its own merits. Where I will differ from most atheists is that I don't think the evaluation of merits for a deity claim should be restricted solely to scientific criteria. Conceptions of god involve more than just what we know about the natural world.

Of course the agenda the Evangelicals advance is so ridiculous I'm not surprised to see atheists ridiculing it. Nor do creationism or Noah's Ark have any place in public schools except as literature. So, I'd rather see atheists making a few claims than none. And while the big bang and neo-Darwinian evolution aren't necessary for atheism, I'd be willing to bet that about 98% of atheists subscribe to both these theories, going as far as to draw existential inspiration from them. Call it a deep human need for love. 

Having favorite dodges is a bit odd, if you ask me. So is apparently seeing 'we make no claims' when 'it makes no claims' is what was actually said. Atheism makes no claims. Neither does theism. They are words for states of mind, one is the state of mind of not holding any belief that any proposed deities actually exist as real beings and the other is the other state of mind.

PEOPLE make claims. Individual people who may speak only for themselves or may speak for an organization but are in no way capable of speaking for the entirety of 'atheist-dom' because there is no such thing, anymore than there is a 'theist-dom'. The only claim an atheist must make is that that they don't believe in the reality of any God or gods. That's it. No one can legitimately say you're not an atheist if that is your position, no matter what else you may or may not believe.

I believe that belief in a deity is not rationally justified by the available evidence. However, I don't say that because I'm atheist, I say that because I'm also a rational skeptic, which many, likely most atheists are not. And I have caveats. I acknowledge that individuals may have evidence that I don't have access to, which I would find convincing if I did. I acknowledge that individuals may hold theistic beliefs that are rational considering the information and tools that are available to them. And I acknowledge that I could be wrong. Maybe I'm missing something or my logic isn't a sound as I think it is. There's an answer to what I think a wildly off-the-mark question at was actually supposed to be aimed.

I'd be willing to guess that at least 60% of theists accept both those theories. You seem to have a deep human need to justify your characterizations of atheists by grasping at flimsy straws.

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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).

Or you could accept the fact that atheism and skepticism are different terms that can overlap and intersect in various ways. Your 'hard atheism' is actually 'hard skepticism'. Conflating atheism and skepticism leads to the problems with which you're concerned, properly distinguishing them does not.