The answer to your first question is "both", the answer to your second question is "No." But you want more detail. Let me use Phawkins' argument as a skeleton for my thoughts.
phawkins1988
This I agree with, though I may disagree about it’s relevance on a couple of levels later.
This is a true statement, but I need to qualify it. Belief is not an action, it's a state of being, and so cannot be chosen or not by default. We use the terminology "He is believing..." but I really think that's misleading. A person who believes something is not really [i]doing anything [/i]with regards to that which he believes. So I agree, that belief is out of our control, but I don't think it's an example of an action outside of free will.
Like other states of being, while we do not control them directly, we do control many of the actions that put us in that state of being, however.
Assuming for the sake of argument this is true- I maintain that belief is not an action, and as such, 3 leaves unaddressed the real potential for moral judgement in the actions that bring that belief about. A person is morally accountable for the books they choose to read, the people they associate with, and so on. We have all persued some sources and avoided others based on what we wished to believe. Acknowledging this fact makes it to hard to believe that we can’t be indirectly accountable for our beliefs.
Agreed, but see above.
Arguable. I’ll grant it.
Granted.
Granted.
Granted.
Technically true. However, God could punish someone for the choices they made in life that resulted in their being an atheist. For example, anybody who claims to be a philosopher, and does the sorts of things that philosophers characteristically do, would not be 'off the hook'. They could potentially be punished for intentionally choosing courses of study that lead them away from the truth of God.
So, I do agree that there are atheists (as well as people who believe plenty of other things) that are not accountable for what they believe in any moral sense- children come to mind, and perhaps people with extremely poor access to education. However, I don't believe that people are universally excused for what they believe- certainly, the people who post here bare reponsibility for what they believe, for example.