Did god give us free will?

I don't know exactly, sorry, but we are made in his image. Of course we have free will though.

Genesis 1:27
King James Version
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

"Of course we have free will, we don't have a choice" - Christopher Hitchens

What makes you so sure we have free will though? You didn't have the will to choose whether or not you were born. Or where you were born. Or what level of cognition and comprehension you'd have. So everything that followed from that was the result of things not your choice. Can you will yourself to have never been born? Can you will yourself to opt out of god's system of eternal reward or punishment?

this ^ is a perfect example of why the term/label 'sheep' was in created...

How do you know you can not WILL yourself to think faster or travel to galaxy's far far away if you are not WILLING to put in the effort to make it become a reality?

Sheep believe that WILL is a WISH... it is not.

WILL is the very definition of WORK

Will yourself to be a better poster then.

According to Einstein .... no, we don't have free will.

Our will is something innate to us. It's the thing our nature guides us to do. Like a magnet that we were born with. That magnet pulls on us. It draws us in.

Like Schopenhauer said "a man can do what he wills, but he can't will what he wills."

People get very upset when this obvious fact is pointed out to them for some reason.

We have will, not free will. "Free" in the sense meant there is nonexistent; everything is under influence of many factors. So to couch the debate as "free will" is a red herring wild goose chase. Where determinists go with is "nothing is not under influence" so there is no "free will." Right. There is just will.

We have a consciousness which is partly volitional. And that's where determinism fails. Along with maybe in some quantum realms??

Exactly. We have incredibly limited will. Now can anyone explain why an all loving god would not choose to limit our will when it comes to raping children? Or slaughtering innocent people because they look different? But he has no problem limiting our will when it comes to being able to breathe underwater?

It’s even worse than this. Take, for example, everyone’s favorite German leader from the first half of the 20th century. The religious types among us would say that God couldn’t stop him from committing his atrocities because of free will. But that isn’t even a good excuse for an all-powerful deity to allow such things to happen. Before he was a German leader, he fought in the Austrian army as a corporal in WWI. He was blinded in a gas attack. Surely, the all-powerful deity might have not saved him in that instance and allowed him to die. Or maybe an all powerful deity could have caused a shell to make a direct hit on the trench where he was. Lots of soldiers died in that war.

Heck, he could have given him a brain aneurysm or heart attack after the war. These things happen to many people and the religious types don’t say that they violate anyone’s free will. Surely if I can come up with Holocaust prevention mechanisms that don’t violate free will, an all-powerful deity could have done likewise. So it isn’t just that God can’t prevent evil because of free will. It really means he doesn’t want to. The alternative is that there is no deity.

Yup. The options are god is a sadistic pedophilic monster who isn't worthy of being worshipped anyway, or he doesn't exist. End thread I guess since no theists even want to attempt to defend against this argument.

Do you think that it is just that if you make the mess then it is up to you, not your Dad, to clean it up?

Ok. What human (other than Hitler) made the mess that caused the Holocaust? Did the Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and other “undesirables” do something to deserve that fate? Or, alternate example - a pedophile creep rapes a small child. Besides the pedophile, who made that mess and why should the child be punished for that mess when an almighty deity could foresee what was about to happen and take steps to prevent it (maybe a nice stroke or seizure for the creep BEFORE he does his evil deed, for example).
?

Pol Pot

I'm sure you know that Hitler didn't force WW2 and the Holocaust all by himself. He had millions of evil human supporters. I would also blame European governments for not strengthening their military in the 1930s when the danger was clearly foreseen. Humankind was capable of preventing this. We were given the unique qualities of a moral conscience and an advanced intellect. It's our own fault for not using them to avoid preventable tragedies. Being lazy and hoping God will intervene is no solution. Just my opinion.

Do you think it's just for a father to bring a child into a world full of messes that no human could possibly clean up, and despite it being well within the powers of the father to clean it up, not to mention the fact that the child had nothing to do with creating the messes, he punishes the child?

Also, you're shifting the goalposts in a major way here. Explain why god does not choose to limit our will when it comes to raping and murdering children, when he has so clearly limited our will in many other ways.

You're not going to get much sympathy from Christians. From a strict Christian religious point of view, God originally gave humans a paradise to live just like you want. Then we humans decided to abandon it. So what we are getting now is what is fair.

Even disregarding that, most people evidently think that life is worth living.
They like a good drink, a good meal, laughing with friends, seeing a sunrise, love of pets, an intimate partner, playing games, the beach , game of poker, and plenty of other joyful events. As far as the suffering and tragedies, we are not helpless. Human life is now 100 times better off than it was thousands of years ago because we made it that way. And it will get better. So rage against God seems inappropriate. Ask Job.

I'm not asking for any sympathy. I'm simply asking why god chose to limit our will when it comes to choosing our eye color, but refuses to limit the will of sick people to rape and murder children. Would you care to explain that?

And they believe it like they believe "Jack and the Frickin' Beanstalk." Full swallow, full mindless recitation, full "Why isn't a magic story from thousands of years ago true?"

IT IS OKAY to read the old magic, supernatural, mythological, religious books and THINK. And therefore to say such things as,"this part is good, that part is not, that part is horrible," etc.