FREE WILL NEED NOT BE ABOUT FINDING OR REJECTING GOD

Free will for believers in religion means that you alone cause your actions and not God or anybody else thus you are accountable if you do good or evil.  God is the innocent bystander.  God gives you free will so that you can choose to attach yourself to him and grow in righteousness or reject him.  That is what they say. 

That does not fit how nothing exists unless God makes it meaning we cannot be separate enough from him to be that independent.  Even if we think we are rebelling and independent of him we are wrong.  We only think that because he makes the thinking.

For this reason, free will will not be about God.

But let us assume that we don't know that and think it can be.

Even if we have free will it could be that it is not about God.  A creator that is more like a non-material intelligence that does not have any awareness that it exists could give you free will but it would not be giving it so you can choose the right way or the wrong way.

You can have free will to decide if you are going to help or hinder another person but this is not free will that is about God.  Those who make their will about God may be abusing it or lying to themselves.  My dinner is about feeding me.  If I say my dinner is somehow the body and blood of God so it is about God, not feeding me, that is only in my head.  Same idea.

The purpose of free will is part of what it is.  A lightbulb that is made to be put into a box so it will never shine is not made to be a lightbulb.  If the ear was not made to see and it sees then it is not an ear.  So the fact that of us agonise about how to make others safe and happy and not about whether God wants it or not shows that our will is not from a God who wants us to use it to come to him.  If nothing gave us our free will and it just happens to be there the same as it just happens that we need other people it is inherently godless and turning to a God idea is an abuse.

The error in attempts to blame you for evil and exonerate God is that if God is the reason anything at all exists then he has more to do with whatever you choose than you do. Whether this contradicts free will or not is controversial. Believers who say that we abuse free will because of God and not in spite of him say the two are compatible. But one thing for sure, it does not get God off the hook. That sadly is what they will not admit.
 
The will is the feeling that whatever I am programmed to think is for the best wins all the time. It therefore makes me “choose”. So my strongest feeling is to do what is best for me. I do not determine what the strongest feeling makes me do for I am not free to want what I like to want with a snap of my fingers. Feeling free is what matters to us not free will. Free will only matters to religious people because they want to excuse God. But nobody has the right to say people do evil not God unless they have strong proof that there is a God. You have to avoid accusing people unless you can adequately support your allegations.
 
People worry that if free will is denied that we deny human responsibility for good and evil. But that is an argument not for free will but for believing in it. If it does not exist, enough of us are getting on okay so what is the big deal?
 
Nobody has the right to accuse you of having the power to freely create evil just because they are afraid what will happen if people do not believe in free will. We are social creatures and our social nature matters more than our alleged free will. This social nature will nurture and restrain us.
 
If we are not free we should be treated well so there is no need to believe we need free will to be entitled to be treated well.
 
Even if we are free, we are considered responsible for the harm we do even if we didn’t mean it. Belief in responsibility then does not depend on belief in free will. We are surer that people suffer than that they are free therefore it is wrong to make them suffer the punishment they have allegedly earned. If they have to be hurt, this should not be the reason. You cannot blame unless you believe in free will. Free will is a vindictive doctrine. Free will is a passive aggressive doctrine. The believer sanctifies it by making it sacred. The atheist might teach free will but at least she does not go that far!
 
We can carry on much the same way as we live without believing in free will. The doctrine is just a nasty rumour spread by religion since the dawn of time and it is inexcusable for it is not needed at all.   
 
God could program us to do good all the time for our feelings that cause us to do good or harm are programmed anyway. It is hypocritical to say he cannot when he is programming us anyway. So it must be better to be badly programmed than to be programmed right!
 
Free will is an assumption. It is impossible to prove it. We think we are free when we are drunk though the drink is removing our freedom. So what makes us think we are free when we are sober?
 
It is a trendy dogma to assert that blaming a person for some bad thing is different from declaring them responsible for it. It goes, "You can't blame a person without declaring them responsible. But you can declare a person responsible without blaming. We say we should never blame but we should remind people of their personal responsibility for the bad things they allow to happen to them." Blame says bad. Bad means should not exist and we should feel a desire to make it suffer. Thus to say anything is bad is vindictive. It wishes evil on evil. To wish evil on a thing is wishing evil and becoming evil just like it would be evil to wish evil on a person. You can't say that the person who would murder Ann's hat if he could is better inside than the person who would murder her. The purpose of telling people they are responsible for something is to tell them they can recognise they are doing the bad, they can do something about the bad and they can stop being bad enough to let more bad happen. The only true difference between blame and responsibility is the different words.
 
People like to be told they are free responsible agents. When I do something, I have an intuition that I could have done something else instead. My programming could have made me do something different. That is the cause of the intuition. But it didn't - that is the bottom line. If my programming could have made me do something different that is not freedom. The intuition is misinterpreted by those who think it means they could have did something totally independent of the programming.
 
People fear that if we deny free will we will take a fatalistic approach to life. It is said that atheism that denies free will makes such fatalism logical. But human nature is not programmed to behave as if fatalism is believed to be true. So who cares!
 
Free will is not to be believed in lightly and without good evidence but sadly it is swallowed and washed down with religion. It is an irrational doctrine, it is a fantasy. It is intrinsically hate and the seed of hate. A person who denies free will and who hates "bad" people is only deceiving himself. He believes deep down. This phenomenon is clear evidence that it leads to hate.  You cannot argue that you love women who need abortion but hate their reproductive rights.  That is a wordplay and you are attempting cognitive dissonance.  You don't want to hate the women directly so you do it by hating what is good for them.  But indirect hate is worse than direct for the latter is more curable and easier to treat.  It does not hide.

All these things show that free will if it is real is about choice and is not about God or anything else.  Choice is choice and is about choosing more than about the thing being good or bad.  That is why one person thinks it is best to do what is obviously destroying their life.  That is why another will do something more wholesome.  The will goes for the best but best for who?  It can be all in your head.  The will is about going for the best regardless of how nice or horrible it is.