The Theological Ramifications Of Free Will

Far too many people think that a deity who creates humans that engage in immoral behavior must in some way be causally and therefore morally responsible for those human acts.  A single person who believes in a fallacious idea is always too high a number, but higher numbers of proponents mean that a fallacy holds more power in a given society.  The idea that God morally erred in creating humans has a fairly significant number of adherents, and thus it deserves to be addressed accordingly.

It is far less common for people to blame the parents of someone who carries out immoral behaviors for bringing him or her into existence, perhaps because it doesn't require especially deep thought to realize that a parent and their child are two different beings.  Unless the latter was literally controlled by the former, the moral standing of the child could not be legitimately blamed on the father or mother.  When it comes to God, however, many people who separate the moral culpability of parents and children say that a deity, if they hold that one exists, is to blame for whatever human acts they regard as evil.  The truth of the matter is deeper than just affirming that a being with autonomy is responsible for its own actions, though.

It is not merely true that free will renders criticism of God irrelevant when humans are the problem; it is also true that it is logically impossible for God to create a world without the opportunity for human sin unless he withholds the capacity for free choices on the part of humans.  There is no such thing as a world where all inhabitants are guaranteed to behave justly as long as they are capable of making their own decisions, uncoerced by other minds (including God's) or by some other spiritual or material factor.  The metaphysical liberty to make one's own decisions is an integral, inescapable part of moral flourishing, but it inevitably leaves open the possibility of morally flawed choices.

A will with only the potential for benevolence and creativity is not ultimately free.  In order for a mind to be truly free to make its own choices, it must have the ability to make choices that are destructive, immoral, and devastating.  Unless a person is willing to exchange any hint of autonomous volition for predetermined moral perfection, he or she is a hypocrite for objecting to the fact that humans can make decisions they find disagreeable.  Thankfully, every destructive human behavior is a reminder that humans can also do that which is productive, intelligent, and just.  I and all beings that are metaphysically equivalent to myself are not slaves to God's desires any more than we are slaves to biological variables, and though it is possible for free will to be misused, the very nature of free will is that it does not have to be.