They absolve themselves of association of any guilt or crime due to their acting within the limits that their interpretive books tells them is okay - murder, mass murder, genocide, incest, stoning, blood sacrifice, beating, rape.
Bingo! And thank you for the lead-in. I had wanted to join in, but I was wanting to take a rather different approach than was being discussed at first. I haven't been back since then (your subtitle caught my eye), so I don't know whether my perspective has been given yet.
Back before our first son was born, my wife was working on her elementary education degree and her credential. One of the requirements was a class in
developmental psychology and she insisted that I take the class too. Basically, children's minds and thought processes go through a series of very characteristic stages of development; look up
Jean Piaget for more information on the subject.
Moral reasoning also progresses through development stages, of which, 30 years later, I only remember two. Young children are mired in
rules-based morality, in which a powerful authority figure makes rules that everybody must follow; the all-important thing is to follow the rules, no matter what. As they mature, they develop
moral reasoning, the ability to examine a situation and to reason out what should be done. A standard test for which stage a person is at is to present the situation of a person who steals medicine which he cannot obtain in any other way, in order to save the live of a family member who would die without that medicine. The person who says that man did wrong because he broke the rules is using rules-based morality, whereas the person who weighs in the factors and motivation is using moral reasoning.
Rules-based morality has some interesting consequences. The rules are given to us by a powerful authority figure, like a parent or a teacher. Those rules appear arbitrary (and could just as well be arbitrary), but that is of no importance. The only important thing is that the rules be followed.
Now, what about
responsibility? What is our responsibility? To follow the rules. To whom are we responsible? Not to each other, but rather only to the authority figure. Now the zinger:
what happens when our actions in following the rules causes harm to come to someone else? Who is responsible? Us? Oh, no! We were just following the rules as we are required to do. Well then who is responsible? Why, the rules-giver, of course. The one who makes the rules is responsible for what those rules cause, not the ones who follow those rules.
Remember that infamous psychology study which the subjects were told was to study the effect of punishment on learning, whereas it was really testing how far a subject would go if ordered to by an authority figure. One of the experimenters posed as another subject who was chosen to be the learner. The learner was locked into a booth hooked up with electrodes. He would be given a memory task and if he made a mistake, then the "teacher" subject would administer an electric shock (the "teacher" was given a sample shock and it was substantial). The more mistakes the "learner" made, the more intense the shocks would become -- the markings of the switches became more and more ominous in appearance, increasingly suggestive of lethality. A scientist in a white lab coat taking notes on a clipboard oversaw the proceedings and would give the "teacher" instructions. Pretty soon, the "learner" would be panicking and begging for the experiment to stop, but the scientist would tell the "teacher" to continue and the "teacher" would comply. Then the "learner" started complaining about his weak heart and the "teacher" would continue as per the scientist's instructions. It would even get to the point when the "learner" became completely silent (ostensibly dead or dying) and the "teacher" would still continue as directed.
Of course, the "teachers" were neither heartless nor sadistic. It was a gut-wrenching experience for them. A most interesting thing happened in the cases where the "teacher" continued to the most lethal shock levels. Everyone reached a point where they just could not continue ... until the scientist, the supreme authority figure, told the "teacher" that he accepted complete responsibility for what would happen. After that, the "teacher" subject was able to continue, many of them to the final most lethal switch.
So then, of course "many Christians lack responsibility"! Because so many of them are still stuck in rules-based morality -- no small wonder, since their churches preach and strongly reinforce rules-based morality. They are not responsible for their actions nor for what their actions do to others; they are only responsible for following the rules. Nor do they have any responsibility to any fellow human, but only to their god.
In contrast, atheists (and a number of theists too) employ moral reasoning -- they actually think about these things, unlike their rules-based neighbors. And they are responsible for their actions. And their responsibility is to everybody else.
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