Introduction

"Free will" seems to be the all-purpose Christian answer to many of life's great mysteries. It is used to explain the seemingly endless contradictions between the idea of an all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing creator god, vs. what we actually see happening around us on a daily basis.

The violence and injustice that we see all around us is hard to reconcile with this concept of the benevolent God. Why does God allow these things to happen?

• "It wasn't God's fault, because he gave us free will. We are responsible for the consequences of our actions."
• "God gave us free will, and we chose to sin."
• "We have to have free will to be able to accept Jesus' offer of salvation."
• "Because it was God's Plan."

This article examines why atheists just can't make this leap of faith.

Free Will and Belief in the Biblical God

Q: "Why didn't God make the Bible easier to understand? Why didn't God write the Bible in such a way so that there would have been no question as to its authenticity?"

A: "Because it would have taken away our free will."

The implication here is that if the knowledge we gained from the Bible was too perfect, that would mean God is forcing us to believe in him. Similarly, if Jesus magically appeared to us in the flesh, that would be too much information and it would destroy our free will in a similar manner.

Nonsense. Since when does giving someone knowledge on a subject force them to do anything? Consider these two examples:

• If I take great pains to teach a young child not to touch a hot stove, and I show her exactly what happens when something comes into contact with the heating element, have I taken away her free will? No, she can still go touch the stove. But I've done everything in my power to impart the knowledge upon her to make a better decision.
• Imagine you find yourself stuck in a room with three doors. You know that two of the doors are booby-trapped and will explode and kill you if you use them. The third door is an exit. Your best friend calls you on your cell phone and tells you which door to use. Has he taken away your free will? No, he has simply given you useful information needed to make a very important decision.

God could have made it absolutely, undeniably clear that the Bible was written by an all-knowing creator of the universe. It would have been quite simple for him to do, really. (If you doubt this, this article gives an example of how an all-powerful God could have very simply left unquestionable proof of his divinity.) Furthermore, given the eternal consequences that supposedly come with non-belief, he should have done everything in his power to ensure that every person on earth had clear and concise instructions. None of this would have affected our free will.

But instead, the Bible looks like a book that was written by primitive men for their own benefit. Why is that, I wonder?

Common Christian Rebuttal

"The information IS all there in the Bible. You just have to open your mind and know how to interpret it."

That doesn't make any sense either. God is perfect. He should have been able to write a book that didn't require any interpretation. The meaning of every last word and every passage should be perfectly clear, and moreover, should leave you awe-inspired. But the truth is that most of the Bible is just meaningless drivel, a great deal is pointless, and there is a frightening amount that is simply appalling. Ever read Judges 19? I rest my case.

It's OK for God to Appear

God appeared to all sorts of people in the Bible, as did Jesus following his resurrection. It apparently did not adversely affect anyone's free will. So, all of the above logical argumentation aside, the Bible itself directly contradicts the philosophy that God can't appear to people without affecting their free will.

Free Will and Bad Things

Q: "Why do bad things happen to people?"

A: "Because people are sinners and we have been given free will."

That might make sense in the case of a bank robber who goes into a bank and is shot and killed while committing a crime.

But what about the thousands of people who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? Were they all sinners deserving of death? How about the hundreds of thousands who died in the giant tsunamis in 2004? Can free will explain their deaths?

Most people would agree that it is a moral obligation for a human to save another person's life, if you have the clear and present opportunity to do so, and especially if it does not put you at any additional risk to do so. Saving someone's life when you have the ability to do so does not take away that person's free will. It makes you a moral and ethical being.

Which is apparently more than can be said for the Christian god. Not only does he not save people in such situations, he is the one that put them there in the first place! He even takes credit for it right in the bible! (See Isaiah 45:7) What kind of monster is this god?

Free Will and God's Miracles

Q: "Why doesn't God cure problems like amputated limbs?"

A: "Because witnessing a miracle like this would take away our free will."

The claim here is that if we were to witness something that was undeniably a miracle, we would be forced to believe. We showed earlier why being "forced to believe" is an invalid argument.

However, there is another very interesting concept implied by this claim. The implication is that all miracles must be performed in such a way that they could have absolutely reasonable explanations in the natural world. In other words, you shouldn't actually be able to tell that it is a miracle at all. Because if you could tell (according to this logic), your free will would be compromised.

But that's what a real miracle is... something so totally beyond comprehension that the only possible explanation is a supernatural cause. But in my experience, if something has two possible explanations – a rational, natural one, or a supernatural, miraculous one – the natural explanation has always been the correct one.

In fact, all supernatural beliefs have gone entirely in one direction since the dawn of recorded history. There are many things that were once attributed to supernatural causes that we now realize are perfectly normal parts of the natural world. Things like thunder and lightning, earthquakes, volcanoes, shooting stars, and solar eclipses. Even diseases like schizophrenia which were once thought to be demonic possession turned out to have perfectly natural causes.

Yet in all of this time, there is not a single thing for which we thought we had a natural explanation, but it later turned out that it was really a supernatural event!

Not once. Ever.

Free Will and Immoral Behavior

Q: "Why did God allow people to do certain evil or sinful behaviors in the first place?"

A: "Because God didn't want to take away your free will."

If God created us, that means that he made up all of our abilities. There are many abilities he chose to give to us, and there were many more that he chose not give us.

There are many abilities you don't have right now, that you never had. Yet you don't miss them, and you aren't complaining that God took away your free will. Here are some examples of what I mean:

• I'd like to be able to move things with my mind, but I can't. I don't think God has taken away my free will simply because I don't have this ability.
• Imagine if people had the ability to make another person's head explode just by staring at them really hard. Conceptually this does not seem like it would be beyond God's power to give us this ability. Yet he chose not to. (Good thing, too.)
• More simple: Birds can fly without the use of clumsy machines. Why can't humans fly? Frogs and other amphibians can stay underwater for long periods of time. Why don't people ever complain that God has taken away their free will because they don't have these abilities?

So let's apply this concept to some sort of sinful behavior. If it is wrong to have premarital sex, why didn't god just create some sort of biological mechanism where it isn't even possible to have sex until after marriage?

If it is wrong to masturbate, why not just take that ability away?

For that matter, why allow killing? Heck, if we couldn't kill one another, the planet would be a lot more peaceful place, because we'd be forced to talk to settle our differences instead of fighting over it. What a concept!

Just take your favorite sinful behavior, and ask why God gave us the ability to do that thing in the first place. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

It sure makes us atheists wonder.

Free Will and Guardian Angels

This is a particularly common thing that atheists hear, and it always makes us scratch our heads. Something bad nearly happens to someone, and someone else says something like, "He must have had a guardian angel looking out for him."

This thinking fails at the most basic level. Look at two real-life cases:

Case #1: A guy fell down a flight of stairs. He was pretty badly banged up, including a broken wrist and a cracked vertebra, but he eventually healed up. If the spine had broken an inch in either direction, he could have been paralyzed or even killed.

Case #2: A woman gets into a car accident. It's a really bad accident, and she is almost killed. A person in another car happens to be a first-responder (paramedic or something similar), and helps keep her alive until the helicopter arrives to fly her to the hospital. It takes her months of physical therapy to recover, though she is mildly brain damaged, and will never quite walk the same again. But she is still alive.

In both of these cases, someone whipped out the "guardian angel" explanation of divine intervention. The thinking? God kept the first guy from being paralyzed, and he kept the woman in the car accident from dying.

To which I always ask, "If God could see this horrible thing about to happen, and was willing to intervene anyway, why not just prevent it altogether?"

Even better, how about something truly miraculous? At the moment the man finds himself tumbling down the stairs, he suddenly disappears and reappears at the bottom, standing on his feet. Or the woman in the car, at the moment of impact, is magically transported out of the car and finds herself standing on the curb.

Why is really bad luck turned into something miraculous? I mean, we admire your optimism and all, but it seems badly misplaced.

To an atheist, the notion that God somehow helped in these instances seems to be saying, "God didn't want them to die right now; he just wanted to mess with them a bit." The notion that God chose to allow this suffering doesn't jibe with the notion of a loving and benevolent god.

So then I get the "Well, it's all part of God's plan…" mantra, but we've already seen the fatal flaws in that one.