I think the thing is that you can't really view RAW files by themselves. It is just the raw data that the camera sensor sees. It needs to be converted then to some sort of file that is viewable. You can do that with a variety of programs or, you can do it in the camera, but wherever it is done, it is "post processing." As you say, you can choose to do so with a heavy hand, or you can do it with relatively neutral settings. In a sense it is all about choices. Some people do get pretty extreme with their processing, doing pretty strong HDR photos and things like that.
My opinion has always been that if I have taken a good photo, then it is worth working on it a little bit after the fact.
This is an example of a waterfall photo I took not too long ago.
First is the shot processed with completely neutral settings from the DNG file in Lightroom:
The second is with some sharpening and highlight recovery (using a program called Color Efex Pro).
The change isn't super-impressive maybe, but it is enough that I do it. On normal shots, out of camera jpegs are probably fine. I find that out of camera jepgs give me trouble with scenes with really wide dynamic range or are really dark (there are a lot of programs that process noise better than the camera does).
This is straight of camera: