Responsibility v Religion Using Religion to Escape Personal Responsibility

A popular criticism leveled against secular atheists by Christians is that atheists don't want to be responsible for their sins to an almighty God. If you stop to think about it, though, there's a lot more in religious theism -- and even some non-institutional religious attitudes -- that are designed to help one avoid taking personal responsibility for what's happening around them.

In Living Without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, Ronald Aronson writes:

As I mentioned, religious believers often hold individuals, being inescapably free and sinful by disposition, responsible for everything that goes wrong, and credit God for everything that goes right.

Such explanations take the lazy way out. They avoid developing the intellectual and moral habits to intelligently negotiate our lives in to day's world. They render us unable to concretely analyze specific situations, so as to sort through how global events are shaped by our own actions, those of others, social systems, and chance.

This is no less true of those whose popular religion frequently refers to "God's plan," or who turn to prayer automatically when facing the inexplicable, unacceptable, or uncontrollable.

In America it has become a public reflex: A madman kills dozens of students in Virginia, and the president calls upon us to seek comfort in prayer; after an ex-employee's murder/suicide rampage at a Michigan accounting firm, the newspaper headline writer seems required to say that colleagues are praying for the two victims on the critical list although the article mentions this nowhere; the president sends soldiers to Iraq, and calls on their families and all Americans to pray for their safety.

And those who are less religious speak constantly of fate, or of things that are "meant to happen," or of there being "a reason for everything."

Where is responsibility in all this? These religion-tinged responses show us that our culture does not encourage people to intelligently assume responsibility for their lives or demand us to explain the most important events and outcomes. ...

Whether we are religious or secular, in this society we often assume responsibility inappropriately; for example blaming ourselves individually for all that turns out poorly. Or we just as wrongheadedly take credit for things that benefit us whether or not we actually caused them to happen.

It's noteworthy that many of those who insist on God being responsible for what happens are also the same people who disagree with programs like affirmative action by arguing that there are no real institutional barriers or problems which create discriminatory outcomes. Thus racial minorities are wholly responsible for what happens to them -- education, employment, housing -- but at the same time God is responsible for what happens to us. Huh?

One of the primary religious dogmas of American conservatism is Personal Responsibility. It's almost a fetish, it's valued so highly. It's also an fundamental ingredient of American culture, a premise in the teachings that we can be whatever we want, that our fates are dependent only on our own determination, etc. But then the same people promoting this will turn around and tell us that we must pray to God, put our lives in God's hands, etc.

It's almost like they completely forget everything they've been saying from one minute to the next. Or maybe that even they don't pay any attention to what they are saying... in which case, why should we?