The court analogy

Believers sometimes provide argument that their case is similar to the court case in the sense that the skeptic is examining their beliefs (as a set of claims), demanding evidence and providing verdict that belief is correct or is false. In that analogy the defendant, thee believer should have the right to be presumed as "innocent unless proven".

Well, that analogy looks quite nice at the first take and everybody guided by her/his feel of fairness would tell - why not? Assumption of innocence until proven is a cornerstone of the justice system which defends the right of the people to not to be persecuted for crimes they did not make, because error in such case may lead to unnecessary suffering of individuals. And all that without the sufficient proof or reason.

Unfortunately anybody who thinks like that falls in the trap, because after some scrutiny, such analogy is just incorrect at the beginning, in its structure.

In the court in standard simplified case, it is the prosecuting side which provides "claims" to the judge which truth should be established in the judicial process. The involved person as defendant may in fact do not plead guilty or innocent - he/she may just say nothing. The judge role is to establish the truth of the claims of the persecution. The rule of assumed innocence of the defendant is a default position which can be changed until the evidence provided by the persecution will meet standards of the judge and rational inquiry in general.

When we now use that analogy to our imaginary conversation of the believer with the skeptic, it is the believer who provides certain claims (a persecutor in case of this analogy) and skeptic is using rules of rational inquiry of reason and evidence to determine if the claim is true or not. This effectively places skeptic in role of judge in our judicial scheme. There is no defendant and there is no much potential harm coming from the inquiry alone.
Whole analogy while initially pleasing and seeming probable just collapses into dust. It is simply not true (at least from the analogy alone) that claims of religious should have shield of innocence. To claim otherwise in our court case it would be to shift burden of proof to the judge to prove that claims of persecution are false. And this is just absurd.