FREE WILL and BEING UNABLE TO SIN ARE COMPATIBLE

 
Free will means you can do a or b and you are the cause of the choice you make. It denies that you are merely programmed or conditioned.

Free will to do good or evil is not the same thing as free will to do moral good or moral evil.  The latter has baggage of rewards and punishment.

It is possible that moral good and moral evil are not about God and thus there is no sin. 

You can agree that it is morally wrong to hurt but deny that this is a sin or violation of the will of God and an act of disrespect for God.

Free will that is always freely used to do good is in theory [so we are told!] possible.

But if God or nature or anything that is not you makes sure that you will always choose good then the theologians say the end result is not free will at all.  Most philosophers do not care.  It is only Christian philosophy that worries much about it for it seeks to blame us not God for bringing evil into the world.  And they also need free will to be about moral good or immorality not the other type of good. And immorality against God at that!

Some thinkers feel that a totally out of character change in a person such as the person who always worked to save lives and who suddenly kills somebody in cold blood only seems to happen but in fact they have been unnoticably changing over time.  In that case, their decision was not sudden but spread out perhaps over several years.  Most of us think of a decision as something we go for right now as opposed to something being spread out and made over months as opposed to in a moment.  That is an error.  The decision is in some way incomplete until the action is done but you have already made you decision long before.  This tells us that temptation to do evil is definitely itself evil when it is a sign that you are gradually choosing an evil such as murder.  The argument that God would have to destroy our free will if he made us inclined only to good is based on the lie that each moment we can freely and unpredictably do bad or good so we can do something out of character any time even if we do not.  It is immature and simplistic.  We are slowly programming ourselves.  At the present moment you can no longer just wipe all that out.  Programming is programming and it does not matter who does it.  It is a straitjacket.  So God can do the programming and make you good.

Many believe that something ensures you choose what you choose anyway so it is a pity it does not ensure you are always completely well-meaning.

If God is not ensuring that a being with free will is always choosing good then something else is.  Your programming is not so it could be your programming.

Even if there is a God he could set up nature to programme you.  Atheists and believers alike have to ask if free will is real if we are biological computers.  If that is dismissed then what?  Our environment is computed by God.  If we are naturally good but get it wrong then if the environment is programmed right there would be no problem. Free will and doing only good because of the way your life is programmed are compatible.
 
BOOKS CONSULTED
 
AN INTELLIGENT PERSONS GUIDE TO CATHOLICISM, Alban McCoy, Continuum, London and New York, 1997
AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS, John Hospers, Routledge, London, 1992
APOLOGETICS AND CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, MH Gill & Co, Dublin, 1954
ARGUING WITH GOD, Hugh Sylvester IVP, London, 1971
CONTROVERSY: THE HUMANIST CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTER Hector Hawton, Pemberton Books, London, 1971
EVIL AND THE GOD OF LOVE, John Hicks, Fontana, London, 1977
FREE INQUIRY, Do We have Free Will? Article by Lewis Vaughn and Theodore Schick JR, Spring 1998. Vol 18 No 2, Council for Secular Humanism, Amherst, New York
GOD AND EVIL, Brian Davies OP, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1984
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans, Green and Co, London, 1912
PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY, Voltaire, Translated by Theodore Besterman, Penguin, London, 1972
RELIGION IS REASONABLE, Thomas Corbishley SJ, Burns & Oates, London, 1960
THE BIG QUESTIONS, Simon Blackburn, Quercus Books, London, 2009
THE CASE AGAINST GOD, Gerald Priestland, Collins, Fount Paperbacks, London, 1984
THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING, Fulton J Sheen, Image Books, New York, 1979
THE PUZZLE OF GOD, Peter Vardy, Collins, London, 1990
THE REALITY OF GOD AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, Brian Davies, Continuum, London-New York, 2006
THE TEACHING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Ed. Canon George D Smith, Ph.D. Burns and Oates and Washbourne, London, 1952
THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London, 1905
UNBLIND FAITH, Michael J Langford, SCM, London, 1982
WHY DOES GOD? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Paul's, Bucks, 1970

BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
 
THE WWW
 
www.ffrf.org/fttoday/august97/barker.html
The Free Will Argument for the Non-Existence of God by Dan Barker