OBJECTION #5: “Why didn’t God create freewill beings that only chose good and not evil?”

Atheist philosopher Michael Martin writes, “There would [be no] problem in creating a world in which humans were free and yet never did anything wrong.”[1] Likewise, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong writes,

Many murderers can be stopped without robbing them of their free will at all. Consider a pedophile who contacts young children on the Internet, talks them into meeting him, then kidnaps them, rapes them, and kills them… What would God have to do to save [the child]? Just make this pedophile’s computer crash right before he contacts Mary. The pedophile would still have free will, but he would not cause as much pain and suffering. So why doesn’t God foil evil plans or turn evil people into klutzes?[2]

This is logically contradictory. If someone was asking for God to create a free person whom he controls, then he would be asking for a logical contradiction. God cannot create a square-circle. He cannot create a world where 2 + 2 = 5. He cannot create a married bachelor. He cannot create a world in which he himself doesn’t exist. He cannot create a stone so heavy that even he can’t move it. And, he cannot create a free person whom he controls. C.S. Lewis remarks,

[By saying that] God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: Meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can’ …nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.[3]

According to the original design, God created humans with almost complete freedom of choice. However, if God made sin completely impossible, then this would restrict humans from being truly free.

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[1] Martin, Michael. Atheism: a Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990. 372.

[2] Craig, William Lane., and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. God?: a Debate between a Christian and an Atheist. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 93.

[3] Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. [San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. 18.