Regardless of religious belief or lack thereof if we don't consider basic human rights like life and liberty as coming from a higher authority than law, as the DoI declares, then the laws that are written by men will give or take all rights. Rights will change as the men who write and read laws change their minds and their seats of power.
Actually, when religiously minded people find out that you're an atheist, many have a tendency to equate that with some sort of devil worship, and a lot of those will start reciting some passage from the Bible in order to 'enlighten' you.
And what is commonly understood as 'devil worship', by the way, might be something like worshipping nature or a big rock in your backyard. So what? As long as they're not hurting anybody, (say like some people who might not get their sick baby timely medical care, because their version of God will take of it all) what business of it is of anybody else to impose their values?
If you want to believe in any of the myriad religious teachings, hey, you're an American, you've got that right, and more power to you. When you want to impose your particular brand of religion on everybody else, whether they're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, pagan, or atheists, people are going to have a tendency to get rather testy about it.
I know that's difficult to understand for people who live strictly 'by the Book', but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.
Therefore, nobody should be surprised when there's a backlash against certain religious groups who advocate that a government of all people should interpret civil law strictly according to one particular religious belief and it's accompanying tract.
I have to take issue with this. If these "non-believers" really were riddled with doubt, they wouldn't take to the barricades with such avidity and dispatch. On the contrary, they have a religious certainty of a magnitude that would leave Peter the Hermit gaping in awe.
The difference is not "belief" versus "non-belief" and the sooner we see it the better. The difference is between "beliefs" with different content.
For instance, I might frame a discussion this way: Consider the man Jesus of Nazareth. Practically everybody is persuaded "believes" that such a person lived in the first century of this era, and that he suffered a criminal's execution at the hands of the imperial Roman government. Now comes the question:
Where is he today?
Any answer that we might give to that question, and I mean ANY answer, involves a "belief". I wasn't alive to see Jesus in the first century, so I don't know the answer firsthand, and I am reasonably confident that nobody who reads these words can claim anything better.
Again, it's not "belief" vs "non-belief". It's more like "belief in A" vs "belief in non-A".
And if anybody brings up the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", settle the question of who defines "extraordinary" before proceeding. The secularist survives by insisting on the sole right to mark the field, and the effect is that only secularist touchdowns show on the scoreboard. If someone wishes to claim that a group of uneducated hicks who willingly endured martyrdom rather than retract their claims to have seen Jesus alive after his execution were mass-hallucinating or had secretly stolen the body or <insert your favorite dodge here>, then I want THAT claim treated as extraordinary. Equal opportunity for all.
Of course this can never be said of believers...