Moral Responsibility

beliefnet

Again ... "Religions" don't kill ... PEOPLE kill ...
teilhard

... often in the name of god.

You are correct, religions don't kill people. Atheism doesn't kill people. People driven by ideology DO kill people. How humans manage their ideology is the crucial element. I'd suggest that ideologies that have irrational and unrealistic elements are more tempting. Religious ideologies have a built-in authority of god, and humans can use that "authority" to defer all sorts of moral accountability. Of course political authority can do the same thing for a person. The crux is a failure of personal and independent moral accountability. Any time a person has an ideology to absorb accountability the more tempting immorality can be.

This is why non-theism is an advantage to one's own moral sense: there is no ideology to justify moral ambiguity. The sole responsibility is on the self, and the self must account.
F1fan

Sometimes a king or a priest or a despot finds it necessary to do things he wouldn't do as a person. This is the ultimate rejection of personal responsibility.
This is unfortunately a rejection of ones humanity as each human is ultimately responsible for everything hesh does. It cannot be laid off on a state, a God, or an ideal.