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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Alright so your argument about free will only really adds up if you are an absolutist about free will. Imagine a perfect utopian paradise of a world. All are free to do whatever they want so long as it is not "evil." Your definition of evil can vary but presumably an omniscient god would have a pretty good idea of what that means. Rhe mwans of prevention xouls be literally anything, because y'know omnipotent and omniscient, including just creating people that simply do not have the capacity for evil. Would the people in that world not have free will? Just because there are some things they cannot do does not mean that in my eye. I can't fly or bite my own finger off or perceive and manipulate the fabric of the universe, does that mean I don't have free will? IMO the only way your position here is logically consistant is if you do take the absolutist position that in order to have free will you must be omnipotent yourself, otherwise there will always be things you cannot do.
I think I would say that the people living in that utopia do not have free will. Their will is not their own, it's God's will imposed on them. They can operate within its confines and limits, but it is externally, not internally defined.
I think you have to separate out two things that are often conflated together, freedom of will and freedom of action. The difference is with freedom of will, I can want to fly, and with freedom of action, I can fly if I want to.
It reminds me of the classic Henry Ford quote about having your car in any color you want, as long as it's black. If I want a black car, fine. If I want a white car, that's a problem.
That's already the case with humans. There are things that a human CAN do that I would never do. The same goes for you and every other human. Are you saying I don't have free will because there are actions that I COULD do but never would? Because the same goes for evil. God could have made a world where people COULD do evil things but never chose to. Therefore the only reason to have made not only people who COULD choose evil, but also people who DO choose evil, is because he wanted some people to be punished for being made in a way that they would do things he already knew they would do and chose to make them anyways.
We live in a world right now where people can do good things but don't, and they can also do evil things, but they don't. That's free will.
What I am saying that free will is an internal condition, it's yours. If an external force is placing hard limits and boundaries on your will, it fundamentally cannot be free. Best case, it's limited. Worst case, it's nonexistent.
The traditional definition of evil for many religions, particularly the Abrahamic ones, is anything that runs contrary to the laws/decrees of God is evil. Forced conformation to that, regardless of how it's done, cannot leave people with free will. God creates laws. God creates a law that forces compliance to his laws. By forcing me to choose to comply, there is no real choice (another paradox), and that fundamentally is not free.
I don't think that God in this case needs people to choose evil to punish them, but there are billions of people who think Hell is super real and probably want for both of us to burn there, and they'd probably disagree. I think it is an safer assumption to simply say if that people who make a choice, whether it's good or evil, are better in aggregate than people who can make no choice at all.