DOES IT MATTER THAT I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BEING FREE ONLY FOR WHAT I DO WITH THAT FREEDOM?

You are not responsible for being free but for how you use your freedom. Proper free will means you have to self-create your free will.

If you could summon free will out of nothing - hypothetically - then there is something more free about you using it than it being imposed on you and you then using it.

The notion of God creating your free will and the notion that you are free because of God's grace and creative power denies this truth. Free will though exploited to defend God letting evil happen is in fact pro-atheist and anti-theist.

God cannot be perfect if he gives you the freedom to harm. It makes no sense to give a person a gun when you know that they will probably shoot somebody with it and call yourself good. Suppose free will is good. Then it is good only because it can be put to use. It is not good in the sense that we do not cause it. Our being free then is a necessary evil. Our use of it is a separate matter.

If free will is a necessary evil then our use of it for good is a necessary evil in the sense that it depends on a necessary evil. The evil then we do is unnecessary evil.

There is no free will to be totally good or absolutely good. In fact, there is no real free will at all. There is no free will in the sense that free speech that is even a little censored is not free speech at all and forces people to doubt the truth when they hear it.

There is no free will to be totally good all the time. It cannot be done. Thus free will is really more a necessary evil than a great good. It is not something to be revelled in. It is not something to be praised as a gift from God as twisted Christianity does.


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 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