Quote Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr View Post
I object to the idea that the inevitability of our actions removes personal responsibility. Maybe you could not have done things differently, but that does not change the fact that you are what you are. If you are a sinner, you sin. If regenerated, good works should follow. The notion that in order to be responsible for something, we must make a rational choice to do it, is a very modern one based on the idea of all people being rational agents with free will.
how can you be responsible for something you have no power over? you are not responsible for being a human, nor being a man or a woman, even though that is who you are, in the sense that that is your being. you have responsibility for being born in a certain place and time. and only if you have a choice to change your nature, (eg how you are) than you can be held accountable for that. but you have no choice about how you are, than how you are is similar to who you are. and you cannot ever be held accountable for who you are.

If someone gets drunk and kills a guy in a bar fight, he is still held responsible, even if he was unable to use his rational faculties, and acted purely on his animalistic instincts. If a dog bred for fighting mauls a baby, you put it down. It didn't make a reasoned decision, it was just being what it is.
we hold him accountable for drinking too much in the first place and therefor he knowingly put himself in a situation he could no longer hold himself in check. no one holds a lion accountable for killing a gazelle. we only put down the dog because we reasonably foresee that the dog, who is not rational might kill again because he is not capable of controlling or changing his nature.

im not sure whether that the possibilty or the illusion of free will might be enough to account for responsibility. such a situation as the descision inducer are difficult, and i have to think more about it. in a logically ordered universe with a rational omniscient and omnipotent deity i think the possibility is enough, but in a causal determined system without a rational reason but only cause and effect, i doubt that is enough. however, if that illusion or even the possibility cease to exist than there is no reason to hold people responsible for their actions.