# Does it violate free will if the person was never given the desire to do something in the first place? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 2, 2025, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339 "2025-12-02T22:09:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2026, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/361 "2026-01-24T09:20:34Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Except the argument doesn’t really entail any empirical claims. Rather, it is about what one can can conclude from a certain empirical datum (the existence of evil). So you’re already taking aim at the wrong target, which you then proceed to miss. > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > The world is, _objectively,_ nowhere near the best possible world. > > First of all, you can’t possibly know that. It could be, for instance, that this is the only possible world—the only self-consistent set of natural laws and initial conditions. Without additional assumptions, we can say very little about what worlds are possible, and what we can say then depends on the plausibility of the assumptions we make. The idea that we could just without further ado point at this world and claim anything about where it is located in the set of possible worlds is just nonsense. > > But more importantly, and it’s really a mystery to me how this isn’t clear at this point, _the FWD doesn’t depend on this being the best possible world._ All nonsense. With an omnipotent involved natural laws and consistency don’t matter. Nor is “the existence of evil” the issue; the existence of overwhelming amounts of evil and vast amounts of natural suffering it. And I can tell very easily that this isn’t the "best of all possible worlds and never has been, because it can be and has been improved. That would be an _impossibility_ in “the best of all possible worlds”, by definition. And the “FWD” depends on using a nonsense concept to defend nonsense in nonsensical fashion. It’s gibberish that declares its own conclusion. There’s no “logic” to it, it is antithetical to logic. It’s just an _emotional_ appeal to the impossible concept of “free will”, to defend an impossible and evil god. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2026, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/362 "2026-01-24T16:37:02Z")
I’ve figured a very simple way to summarize the (main) point of disagreement between me and @Half_Man_Half_Wit Let’s say the claim is _Bob is a vegetarian_. And the observation is that we see Bob with a shopping trolley full of meat products. Does this observation give us _any reason_ to doubt the claim? The answer is _yes_, but **importantly** : It falls far short of proving that Bob is not a vegetarian. In fact, I may _still believe the claim_ that he’s vegetarian, because this is just one piece of circumstantial evidence with many possible explanations. But the observation, in itself, goes against the expectation for a vegetarian Bob. And the more observations we make like this – e.g. Bob walking out of a steakhouse, Bob seen holding a BBQ chicken leg, etc etc – the more I would doubt the claim. And this is all my position has ever been, this is when I first brought up the concept of doubt, way back in Post#143: > [@Mijin](#): > > Call it circumstantial evidence if you like. > […] > The idea that maybe there’s some explanation (that no-one has thought of yet) does not take away from the fact that, on its face, [apparently unnecessary suffering] is reason to doubt the existence of an omnimax god. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2026, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/363 "2026-01-24T18:04:23Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > And again, I’ve detailed an explicit situation where omnipotence and omnibenevolence co-occur, so no, you haven’t falsified anything. You’re still just affirming a contradictory position where on the one hand, choosing one alternative over the other doesn’t take any ability away, and on the other hand, somehow always choosing good means you can’t so evil. > > An omnipotent being chooses to always do good. It’s thus omnibenevolent. That’s it. No issue at all. And the being cannot choose to do bad. If the being were truly both, you should be able to show how it doing bad does not violate omnibenevolence. Your omnipotent and omnibenevolent being is severely constrained in what it can do. It can choose to do good - no argument there. Never has been. It cannot choose to do bad (meaning increase suffering) and remain onibenevolent - that you have never yet addressed. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > And again, I’ve detailed an explicit situation where omnipotence and omnibenevolence co-occur, so no, you haven’t falsified anything. No you haven’t. You have just asserted this being is omnipotent, but have refused to consider the case where it does things in conflict with omnibenevolence. You are claiming it voluntarily limits its omnipotence, but you have not demonstrated it is logically possible for it to be truly omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Your insistence on using choice invalidates your argument. A truly omnipotent being has choice, but is not limited to a particular choice. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2026, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/364 "2026-01-24T19:12:23Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > It’s not clear to me that this is the case. I’d expect the set of worlds in which clowns come from Venus to be empty, since it’s not possible for there to be life on Venus. But the set of worlds with tri-omni gods is empty because gods are artificial constructs of the human mind. I mean, if it’s okay to assume 1 nonexistent being, why not a bunch more? > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > The crucial point is that you need some estimation of how many chocolate cookies to expect in order to get started—in order to know how unusual it is to draw a chocolate cookie. If you find one chocolate cookie, then you can conclude your host who claims to hate chocolate cookies just has one left over from a guest. You find two chocolate cookies, same deal. You find a cookie jar full of chocolate cookies, maybe your host, who claims to not like chocolate cookies, keeps them around for visitors. If you find a cookie jar full and several packages of chocolate cookies, at what point do you conclude that maybe your host is lying? The extra information that @Mijin seems to be using is not the distribution of worlds with evil in them, it is the behavior that claiming to hate something is inconsistent with having a lot of it around. How do we know there is a _lot_ of evil around? The same sense of morality that helps us identify evil in the first place. The same ability to judge other people by their actions applies to judging God. It has to, or morality is meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2026, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/365 "2026-01-25T08:00:17Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > All nonsense. With an omnipotent involved natural laws and consistency don’t matter. If consistency didn’t matter, then obviously there’s no problem of evil in the first place, since the argument is that the observed amount of evil is _inconsistent_ with the existence of a tri-omni God. But obviously, even an omnipotent being can’t do logically contradictory things. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Nor is “the existence of evil” the issue; the existence of overwhelming amounts of evil and vast amounts of natural suffering it. That judgment requires you to have some means by which to tell whether the observed amount of evil is indeed ‘overwhelming’. You don’t, simple as that. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And I can tell very easily that this isn’t the "best of all possible worlds and never has been, because it can be and has been improved. That would be an _impossibility_ in “the best of all possible worlds”, by definition. That still confuses a world with a state of the world at some point in time. The evil in the world may vary over time, but that doesn’t make it not the same world anymore. ‘World’ is used here in the same sense as it is used in ‘the creation of the world’, or ‘the end of the world’, or what have you: as a succession of world-states over time. This is the only sensible concept, as if one surveys things from the perspective of an omniscient deity, this is the vantage point on the world they have. God wishes to minimize the total amount of evil while maximizing moral value, but these are only sensible over the whole of history. Also, still, the FWD doesn’t depend on whether you believe this is the best possible world. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And the “FWD” depends on using a nonsense concept to defend nonsense in nonsensical fashion. It’s gibberish that declares its own conclusion. There’s no “logic” to it, it is antithetical to logic. Then again, you’re heartily invited to point out where the logic goes wrong. Just saying it does is meaningless. > [@Voyager](#): > > And the being cannot choose to do bad. If the being were truly both, you should be able to show how it doing bad does not violate omnibenevolence. That’s just nonsense. Of course nothing (no matter how omnipotent) can do evil while remaining omnibenevolent—just as nothing can paint my wall green while it remains red. Not being able to do logically impossible things is not a limitation on omnipotence. Again, you’re holding two contradictory positions. Either doing A while not doing B doesn’t diminish your capacity of doing B. Then being omnipotent and doing only good things doesn’t diminish your capacity of doing bad things. Or, an omnipotent being needs to ‘prove’ its omnipotence by doing evil. Then, it can’t be true in general that you don’t need to do something in order to be able to do it. > [@Voyager](#): > > Your omnipotent and omnibenevolent being is severely constrained in what it can do. It can do anything any omnipotent being can do, but—also like any omnipotent being—only does a subset of these things. That just happens to be the set of good things. That’s then why it is omnibenevolent. > [@Voyager](#): > > It cannot choose to do bad (meaning increase suffering) and remain onibenevolent - that you have never yet addressed. I have said over and over that ‘doing bad and remaining omnibenevolent’ is just a logical contradiction. > [@Voyager](#): > > No you haven’t. You have just asserted this being is omnipotent, but have refused to consider the case where it does things in conflict with omnibenevolence. Because the fact that it is omnibenevolent is _due to_ it not doing things in conflict with omnibenevolence. > [@Voyager](#): > > You are claiming it voluntarily limits its omnipotence, but you have not demonstrated it is logically possible for it to be truly omnipotent and omnibenevolent. It isn’t limiting its omnipotence in the slightest, it is just choosing how to apply it. This would, again, only be a limitation if it weren’t true that doing A doesn’t imply an inability to do B. You are simply contradicting yourself and reaching a nonsensical conclusion as a result. > [@Voyager](#): > > Your insistence on using choice invalidates your argument. A truly omnipotent being has choice, but is not limited to a particular choice. It isn’t limited to any one choice, because the implication isn’t that because it is omnibenevolent, it only chooses good; rather, it’s that because it only chooses good (while being fully able to choose anything else, like I am to eat a banana despite never doing it) it is omnibenevolent. Again, tell me, where does omnipotence suddenly vanish in this situation? > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > An omnipotent being is faced with a choice between _e_ and _g_. They choose _g_. That choice, by your own admission, doesn’t impact their ability to choose _e_, and hence, their omnipotence, in the slightest. So we’re back in the same situation as before: the omnipotent being is again faced with the choice of _e_ or _g_. Again they choose _g_. Again their omnipotence isn’t lessened. And then so on: after the _n_th choice, if their ability to choose between _e_ and _g_ hasn’t lessened, neither does it do for the _n+1_st. Hence they never loose any omnipotence, always choose _g_, and are thus both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2026, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/366 "2026-01-25T08:18:20Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > If consistency didn’t matter, then obviously there’s no problem of evil in the first place, since the argument is that the observed amount of evil is _inconsistent_ with the existence of a tri-omni God. But obviously, even an omnipotent being can’t do logically contradictory things. > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > Nor is “the existence of evil” the issue; the existence of overwhelming amounts of evil and vast amounts of natural suffering it. > > That judgment requires you to have some means by which to tell whether the observed amount of evil is indeed ‘overwhelming’. You don’t, simple as that. > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > And I can tell very easily that this isn’t the "best of all possible worlds and never has been, because it can be and has been improved. That would be an _impossibility_ in “the best of all possible worlds”, by definition. > > That still confuses a world with a state of the world at some point in time. The evil in the world may vary over time, but that doesn’t make it not the same world anymore. ‘World’ is used here in the same sense as it is used in ‘the creation of the world’, or ‘the end of the world’, or what have you: as a succession of world-states over time. This is the only sensible concept, as if one surveys things from the perspective of an omniscient deity, this is the vantage point on the world they have. God wishes to minimize the total amount of evil while maximizing moral value, but these are only sensible over the whole of history. Again, not for an omnipotent. An omnipotent doesn’t need to worry about “world states over time”, they could simply make the best possible world instantly, with no past. Your argument is just another evasion of the “problem of evil”, in this case by equating omnipotence with powerlessness. And my method of seeing the overwhelming suffering in the world is called “eyes and ears”. Denying reality will not change reality. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2026, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/367 "2026-01-25T12:43:32Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Let’s say the claim is _Bob is a vegetarian_. > And the observation is that we see Bob with a shopping trolley full of meat products. Does this observation give us _any reason_ to doubt the claim? This isn’t analogous to the situation with the PoE, however. There, the information you have is that ‘Bob is a vegetarian who buys meat (at least some, at least sometimes)’—this is what follows from the argumentation of the FWD. Since you have _no idea_ how often and how much, you have no grounds on which to claim that the amount of meat bought in a given instance exceeds what you should expect—and hence, no grounds on which to find it in conflict with the idea that Bob is a vegetarian. Again, just ask yourself: given that information, _what exactly is it_ that makes you doubt that Bob is a vegetarian as a result? It can’t be the mere fact that he is a vegetarian, since you already know that despite this, he buys (an unspecified quantity of) meat. > [@Mijin](#): > > And the more observations we make like this – e.g. Bob walking out of a steakhouse, Bob seen holding a BBQ chicken leg, etc etc – the more I would doubt the claim. But you only have a single observation (a single world). Again, if you could compare across distinct observational instances, there would be no problem to establish a baseline—but you don’t have that option (except virtually, through assumptions and arguments). Let me address this and @Irishman’s points with an explicit example. Suppose your gran has contributed a jar of cookies to a bake sale. You’re tasked with bringing her jar home, but unfortunately, you don’t know what the jar looks like. How can you tell which jar is the one containing your gran’s cookies? Without further information, evidently, you can’t. Suppose you know your gran disapproves of raisin cookies. If you know that she’d never, ever even bake a single raisin cookie, your task becomes easy: any jar from which someone draws a raisin cookie is out, immediately. (This would be the situation if the logical problem of evil worked.) But now suppose you know that despite her disapproval of raisin cookies, you knew that she sometimes makes them, perhaps because you, her favorite grandchild, really likes them. What does somebody pulling a raisin cookie from a jar now tell you? Well, nothing at all, evidently. Beyond the fact that there _may be_ raisin cookies in your gran’s jar, you simply have no information. There might be none, or a single one, or the entire jar might be raisin cookies. Each of these cases is compatible with the information you have, and equally well so; and so are all the ones in between. So how could you nevertheless make a decision? Well, what you need is further information: some idea of how many raisin cookies to expect, given that the jar is your gran’s. Then you can check whether the observed raisin fraction agrees with what you expect—or not. This is an application of Bayesian reasoning. Bayes’ theorem allows you to assign a certain credence, or belief, to a hypothesis on the basis of the evidence you have obtained, and allows you to modify that belief when additional evidence comes to light. If P(A|B) is the likelihood that the hypothesis A is correct, given the observed evidence B, then we have: P(A|B)=\frac{P(B|A)}{P(B)}\cdot P(A), where P(A) is the base probability of the hypothesis being correct, P(B) is the base probability of observing the evidence, and P(B|A) is the probability that you observe a certain piece of evidence B, if the hypothesis A is correct. Here is a nice visual proof of this relation (taken from the [wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem) in case there are problems with the image embedding): [![](https://i.postimg.cc/8P6VG8RG/Bayes-theorem-visual-proof.jpg) ](https://i.postimg.cc/8P6VG8RG/Bayes-theorem-visual-proof.jpg) This should look familiar: it’s just the illustration of the situation in the PoE I provided above. Here, the hypothesis A is G, i.e. the existence of God, and the evidence B is E, the observation of evil. Essentially, the question is: how likely are we to be in the overlap of both? It should be clear that just observing the existence of evil does tell us essentially nothing, here. The overlap could be tiny, or envelop all of B—both are equally compatible with what we know. Anything further than that must thus _necessarily_ appeal to additional information. I think this becomes clear by studying cases where we _do_ have additional information, and hence, can say something more than this. So let’s get back to your gran and her jar of cookies. Suppose that there are two jars, between which you have to decide. This means that the probability of selecting the correct jar, P(N) (N for ‘nanna’ to avoid confusion with G for God), is a priori 50%. Suppose also that you know that gran would never, under any circumstances, put more than 10% raisin cookies into her jar. Then suppose that the other jar comes from somebody S who doesn’t care whether they make raisin or non-raisin cookies, such that the probability of drawing a raisin cookie from their jar is P(R|S)=0.5. Then, you have enough information to update your probability that you have chosen the right jar, based on whether you draw a raisin cookie. Thus, you have the following items of knowledge: - Likelihood of having selected gran’s jar (prior probability): P(N)=0.5 - Likelihood of drawing a raisin cookie R given that you have selected gran’s jar: P(R|N)=0.1 - Likelihood of drawing a raisin cookie from either jar: P(R) = P(R|N)\cdot P(N) + P(R|S)\cdot P(S) = 0.3 Now we can easily calculate the probability that you have selected gran’s jar, given that you have just pulled out a raisin cookie: P(N|R)=\frac{P(R|N)}{P(R)}\cdot P(N)=\frac{0.1}{0.3}\cdot 0.5=0.1\bar{6}, so you only have a 17% chance that this is, in fact, granny’s jar. Drawing another cookie, and obtaining again a raisin one, lowers that probability to about 5.5%. This is the basic method how to properly take evidence into account in order to revise one’s belief in a certain hypothesis. _Mutatis mutandis_, this would be the way to revise one’s belief in a tri-omni God given that one observes evil. Now, to pre-empt the complaint, nobody does this in such a formal manner in everyday situation. But just because one usually uses heuristics that in everyday situations are sufficient to approximate this sort of process, doesn’t mean that this isn’t the procedure one ought to follow if one wants to be strictly correct. Furthermore, the process is to a certain degree independent of one’s prior beliefs: if you were initially pretty sure that you had granny’s jar, you might need more evidence to convince you that this isn’t the case, but you’d eventually get there. But what is absolutely the upshot of this discussion is that the mere information that granny doesn’t like raisin cookies, but may nevertheless include some, doesn’t suffice to tell you which way the needle of your belief should move upon finding a raisin cookie. For it is just as compatible with this information that granny’s jar contains, say, 60% raisin cookies—in which case your belief that you have granny’s jar will in fact increase upon finding a raisin cookie, and continue to increase upon finding more of them. Hence, whether or not evidence (finding more and more evil in the world, say) should increase your confidence in a hypothesis depends on information that you simply do not have. Claiming that it _always_ decreases your confidence thus is simply irrational. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2026, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/368 "2026-01-25T20:11:25Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > That’s just nonsense. Of course nothing (no matter how omnipotent) can do evil while remaining omnibenevolent—just as nothing can paint my wall green while it remains red. Not being able to do logically impossible things is not a limitation on omnipotence. Good example. If the definition of a situation is an omnipotent being and a wall that remains red, the as you said the being cannot paint the wall green. Since another being can, this being cannot be omnipotent. It is logically impossible to have omnipotence and eternal redness both - but that does not mean omnipotence is logically impossible, just omnipotence in this situation. Every supporter of a tri-omni god I’ve ever seen has omnipotence as true omnipotence, the definition of which I think we agree with. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > It can do anything any omnipotent being can do, but—also like any omnipotent being—only does a subset of these things. That just happens to be the set of good things. That’s then why it is omnibenevolent. Doing only a subset of things it can do in no way is a constraint on what it can do. It can roll only one value at a time - but it has the ability to roll any value. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I have said over and over that ‘doing bad and remaining omnibenevolent’ is just a logical contradiction. Since an omnipotent being can do bad, you’ve just admitted that omnipotence and omnibenevolence are contradictory. Finally! (We’ll ignore that doing bad does not go against omnibenevolence if it is the least bad.) > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > It isn’t limited to any one choice, because the implication isn’t that because it is omnibenevolent, it only chooses good; rather, it’s that because it only chooses good (while being fully able to choose anything else, like I am to eat a banana despite never doing it) it is omnibenevolent. > > Again, tell me, where does omnipotence suddenly vanish in this situation? Again, we care what it can do, not what it does. If you have the ability to eat an fruit, and you also have the characteristic that you do not eat any yellow food, you do not have the ability to eat a banana while obeying the second trait. Choosing not to eat a banana in no way solves this problem. Dividing by 0 leads to paradoxes, and they are not in any way refuted because I never choose to divide by 0. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/369 "2026-01-26T06:28:03Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > If the definition of a situation is an omnipotent being and a wall that remains red, the as you said the being cannot paint the wall green. Since another being can, this being cannot be omnipotent. No, no omnipotent being can paint a wall red while it remains green. Any omnipotent being can paint a red wall green. One that doesn’t want to just won’t. > [@Voyager](#): > > Doing only a subset of things it can do in no way is a constraint on what it can do. Perfect. So choosing to only do good things is not a constraint on what it can do. So being omnibenevolent is not a constraint on what it can do. So omnipotence and omnibenevolence are perfectly consistent. > [@Voyager](#): > > Since an omnipotent being can do bad, you’ve just admitted that omnipotence and omnibenevolence are contradictory. Finally! No, of course not. No omnipotent being can, as I said, be both omnibenevolent and do evil. A non-omnibenevolent being can’t do so because they’re not omnibenevolent; an omnibenevolent being can’t do so because then, they wouldn’t be omnibenevolent any more. But both of these beings can do evil; the omnibenevolent being just doesn’t (which, as you agree, doesn’t limit their omnipotence). So both these beings can do exactly the same things, they just select different subsets of things to actually do. And that’s the whole deal. > [@Voyager](#): > > If you have the ability to eat an fruit, and you also have the characteristic that you do not eat any yellow food, you do not have the ability to eat a banana while obeying the second trait. Ok, so for the fourth (or fifth?) time, you don’t engage with the scenario I’ve provided. Of course, I can’t make you, but I’m just pointing out that throughout, you’ve been the one slamming me for not properly engaging with your argument. And again, ‘not being able to eat a banana _and_ remaining a non-banana-eater’ is not the same thing as ‘not being able to eat a banana’. No omnipotent being can do the former; it’s not a possible power. I can eat a banana just as much as anyone; I just don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/370 "2026-01-26T08:11:22Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > All nonsense. With an omnipotent involved natural laws and consistency don’t matter. > > If consistency didn’t matter, then obviously there’s no problem of evil in the first place, since the argument is that the observed amount of evil is _inconsistent_ with the existence of a tri-omni God. But obviously, even an omnipotent being can’t do logically contradictory things. That’s not the same type of inconsistency. An omnipotent god isn’t required to build a world that is self-consistent. His world can be changed moment by moment at his discretion. However, an omnibenevolent god’s actions must be consistent with benevolence. That is a type of logical requirement by definition. Continuity of the universe’s laws is a different kind of consistency than consistency with the definition of the word benevolence. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > This isn’t analogous to the situation with the PoE, however. There, the information you have is that ‘Bob is a vegetarian who buys meat (at least some, at least sometimes)’—this is what follows from the argumentation of the FWD. Since you have _no idea_ how often and how much, you have no grounds on which to claim that the amount of meat bought in a given instance exceeds what you should expect—and hence, no grounds on which to find it in conflict with the idea that Bob is a vegetarian. If Bob is a vegetarian, one wonders why he buys meat. But even buying meat isn’t the same as going to a restaurant that specializes in meat and has limited, if any, vegetarian options. Be that as it may, you are wrong that knowing Bob sometimes buys meat doesn’t cast doubt on his claim of being a vegetarian. Certainty and doubt aren’t the same thing. His buying 1 steak 1 time might not be inconsistent with his claim that he does not eat meat. If he lives alone and still buys steaks every week, it is inconsistent with him being a vegetarian even if you can’t prove he eats any of the steaks. The more times you see him in the proximity of meat-eating, the more you can doubt the sincerity of his claim to being a vegetarian. I don’t typically drink alcohol. I might say “I don’t drink alcohol,” or “I’m a non-drinker.” On the other hand, last November I was hanging out with a couple of friends and I tried some moonshine. And New Year’s Eve I had a couple glasses of champagne. Ididn’t get drunk or even buzzed either time. I probably won’t drink any alcohol for another two or more years. But I did technically drink alcohol. But I’m not a perfect omni-nondrinker. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Suppose your gran has contributed a jar of cookies to a bake sale. You’re tasked with bringing her jar home, but unfortunately, you don’t know what the jar looks like. How can you tell which jar is the one containing your gran’s cookies? Without further information, evidently, you can’t. If your gran tasks you with bringing home her cookie jar but doesn’t tell you how to identify it, she is an idiot, an asshole, or both. If you have to resort to pulling out cookies one at a time and guess if she might have sent some raisin cookies, she doesn’t want her cookie jar, she just wants to blame you for not having it. If the only way to tell if god is tri-omni is to measure the amount of evil against some arbitrary unknown standard, then god isn’t tri-omni, he’s a liar or a dick or both. If the tri-omni god created everything, he created us. He created our sense of morality. If our sense of morality is faulty, it’s his fault. If we are unable to confirm he is omnibenevolent, that is his failure. But the tri-omni god cannot fail. Ergo, our sense of morality is sufficient to judge the tri-omni god. Our sense of morality judges the god is not omnibenevolent. Ergo 1. God is not tri-omni. 2. God lies about being tri-omni. Or 3. God does not exist. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/371 "2026-01-26T08:53:19Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > That’s not the same type of inconsistency. An omnipotent god isn’t required to build a world that is self-consistent. I mean, and only ever have meant, logical consistency. The point was that even a tri-omni God is constrained by what is logically possible, and the FWD gives a construction where it isn’t logically possible to create a world free of evil. > [@Irishman](#): > > Be that as it may, you are wrong that knowing Bob sometimes buys meat doesn’t cast doubt on his claim of being a vegetarian. Certainty and doubt aren’t the same thing. I’m not saying they are. The point is that whether Bob’s buying meat casts doubt on whether he is a vegetarian depends on information you don’t have. Hence the cookies example: if you believe that there are only 10% raisin cookies in gran’s jar, then drawing a raisin cookie decreases your confidence that the jar you drew from is gran’s from 50% to 17%; if you believe that there are 60% raisin cookies in the jar, it increases to 55%. So there are two cases: 1. 10% raisin cookies in gran’s jar: drawing a raisin cookie decreases your belief that this is gran’s jar 2. 60% raisin cookies in gran’s jar: drawing a raisin cookie increases your belief that this is gran’s jar If one claims that drawing a raisin cookie/finding meat in Bob’s shopping cart/finding evil in the world _decreases_ one’s belief in this being gran’s jar/Bob being a vegetarian/God existing, as you and @Mijin are doing, one claims that one has sufficient information that one is in a situation of type 1, rather than in a situation of type 2. _But in neither of these cases do we actually have that information without making additional assumptions_. Both case 1 and case 2 are consistent with what is known, namely that one should expect some quantity of raisin cookies/meat/evil. Claiming we’re in one particular of these cases (or infinitely many others like them I’m just omitting for brevity) is _absolutely the same as_ claiming we have more information than that. > [@Irishman](#): > > If the only way to tell if god is tri-omni is to measure the amount of evil against some arbitrary unknown standard, then god isn’t tri-omni, he’s a liar or a dick or both. That has absolutely nothing to do with anything under discussion. We’re not aiming to prove that God is tri-omni, or even that they exist, we’re assessing how finding evil impacts the credence one should have in that hypothesis. And the answer is simply, without further assumptions—which may indeed be perfectly reasonable ones!—it logically doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/372 "2026-01-26T10:18:11Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Again, just ask yourself: given that information, _what exactly is it_ that makes you doubt that Bob is a vegetarian as a result? Because the expectation, all else being equal, is that he wouldn’t have meat in the trolley. Let me be clear: I specifically picked this as an example of poor circumstantial evidence. There are many reasons that Bob could be buying meat, from needing to cook for others, to owning a pet, heck, to it being his job to dispose of out of date meat. But this is exactly the point; given the definitions of “vegetarian” and “meat” there already need to be external mitigating factors, it’s just that for this singular observation the mitigations are quite plausible. But the more observations like this that we make – e.g. Bob wandering out of KFC with a chicken leg and then we see him apparently about to bite before our view is blocked – the more unlikely the factors that would explain that observation. Likewise with PoE. Is it possible that there’s such a thing as _necessary suffering_? I guess so, even though I find the free will defence completely unconvincing. But the more suffering, and the more random and arbitrary it appears, the more extensive and complex the mitigations would be required to be, and the less plausible it all seems. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > But you only have a single observation (a single world). Again, if you could compare across distinct observational instances, there would be no problem to establish a baseline—but you don’t have that option (except virtually, through assumptions and arguments). And yet we still can gain confidence or doubt in particular propositions, and do science in our singular world. To return to my example, are you seriously suggesting that even as we see more and more examples of Bob appearing in situations where it appears that he’s about to consume meat we still have **no reason whatsoever** to doubt that he’s a vegetarian? > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > But now suppose you know that despite her disapproval of raisin cookies, you knew that she sometimes makes them, perhaps because you, her favorite grandchild, really likes them. We don’t know this in PoE. This is where you’ve slipped the conclusion in again. The suggestion has been that God _might have_ reasons to allow some suffering e.g. free will. That’s not a demonstration that free will _actually is_ a critical requirement, or that it limits the level of suffering to a non-zero amount. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/373 "2026-01-26T10:28:29Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > We don’t know this in PoE. This is where you’ve slipped the conclusion in again. We absolutely do. The conclusion of the FWD is that the intersection G\cap E is non-empty. This is equivalent to a non-zero expected amount of evil. Again suppose there is one case with _x_ evil across _n_ worlds, then drawing a world at random yields an expected amount of evil of _n/x_. > [@Mijin](#): > > The suggestion has been that God _might have_ reasons to allow some suffering e.g. free will. That’s also not right. The conclusion is the construction of a case where God can’t prevent the existence of evil. Since such a case exists, there is an element in G\cap E, hence G\cap E is non-empty. The point is simply that saying that evidence of evil lowers the credence in a tri-omni God is logically equivalent (as in, the two propositions mutually entail each other) to saying that you know a maximum expected evil per world. But you don’t. So this is claiming to possess more information than you have. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/374 "2026-01-26T10:34:46Z")
The only way a tri-omni god can be omniscient and omnibenevolent is if She has looked at all the possible worlds (in model form, presumably) and made the omniscient determination that this one (our world) is the least evil of all possible worlds, despite having evil in it. That is a disappointing conclusion, and means that omnipotence is basically worthless. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/375 "2026-01-26T11:00:10Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > an expected amount of evil of _n/x_ (_x/n_, obviously) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/376 "2026-01-26T15:48:22Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > The conclusion of the FWD is that the intersection G\cap E is non-empty. This is equivalent to a non-zero expected amount of evil. The first part – that the set of universes is non-empty – is trivially true for just about any combination of claims that we can think of. Going back to my example, the set of universes where Bob is a vegetarian and yet we see him wearing a bacon grease covered sweater, holding a rack of BBQ ribs in each hand, standing on a podium that says “World’s biggest meat-eater”, is also not empty. If suffering gives me no reason to doubt that an omnimax god exists, so the observation of Bob’s comically meat-oriented lifestyle gives me no reason to doubt that he’s a vegetarian. For the second part, no it has nothing to do with expectation. Finding that I cannot rule out that pixies exist does not mean I expect the number of pixies to be non-zero. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > That’s also not right. The conclusion is the construction of a case where God can’t prevent the existence of evil. Since such a case exists, […] No we don’t know that it exists in the way you’re trying to use it here. Let’s say I have a model of dark matter that involves particles of X GeV mass. And we find that we can see no reason that such a model is impossible. Does that prove that the model actually works? No; we could discover tomorrow that another observation actually means particles of X GeV are ruled out – that a universe of our dark matter observations + X GeV particles is impossible. That’s where FWD lives currently. Even if we don’t know formally that it’s impossible, yet, that’s not the same thing as demonstrating that it is a possible world. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/377 "2026-01-26T18:01:56Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > No, no omnipotent being can paint a wall red while it remains green. Any omnipotent being can paint a red wall green. One that doesn’t want to just won’t. Not while keeping the wall red. But if you remove that requirement it is possible to paint the wall green, so any entity constrained not to is not omnipotent. You appear to be saying that there are different levels of omnipotence, imposed by conditional constraints, so an entity constrained to do good by omnibenevolence is just as omnipotent as one unconstrained. That’s absurd. Maybe you should label these different levels, so that OP(omnibenevolent) \< OP(null) where OP is omnipotent and the argument is the constraint. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Perfect. So choosing to only do good things is not a constraint on what it can do. So being omnibenevolent is not a constraint on what it can do. So omnipotence and omnibenevolence are perfectly consistent. No, choosing to only do good is not necessarily a constraint unless the entity is forced to choose that way. If it is not forced to do that, you should be able to show the consequences when it does not do that. You should be able to conduct the mental experiment of “the entity does bad. Now what are the consequences?” You have not done this so far. Why not give it a try? > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > No, of course not. No omnipotent being can, as I said, be both omnibenevolent and do evil. A non-omnibenevolent being can’t do so because they’re not omnibenevolent; an omnibenevolent being can’t do so because then, they wouldn’t be omnibenevolent any more. But both of these beings can do evil; the omnibenevolent being just doesn’t (which, as you agree, doesn’t limit their omnipotence). So both these beings can do exactly the same things, they just select different subsets of things to actually do. And that’s the whole deal. Now, that’s confusing. Of course an omnipotent being can do evil if it is not constrained by omnibenevolence. And again, you are treating omnibenevolence as a description, not a property of the being. You have yet to show me a source which agrees with this definition, despite a few tries. It is as absurd as claiming omnipotence for an entity which has just never yet failed at doing something. Another problem. I have avoided the argument that the god we know does evil all the time, and does no maximize good. It is not necessary for my argument. But if you claim omnibenevolence due to its actions, you don’t have a leg to stand on, since you can only do so by assuming that all actions lead to maximal good. That argument implies omnibenevolence is a property, not a description. What justification do you have for calling god’s allowing or causing a tsunami which kills hundreds of thousands good unless you pre-assume omnibenevolence? > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > And again, ‘not being able to eat a banana _and_ remaining a non-banana-eater’ is not the same thing as ‘not being able to eat a banana’. No omnipotent being can do the former; it’s not a possible power. I can eat a banana just as much as anyone; I just don’t. Why did you leave out “cannot eat any yellow food” part? That’s at the heart of the example. Without that of course you can eat the banana without getting into any contradictions. Without omnibenevolence as a property an omnipotent being can do anything logically possible. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/378 "2026-01-26T21:37:28Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Going back to my example, the set of universes where Bob is a vegetarian and yet we see him wearing a bacon grease covered sweater, holding a rack of BBQ ribs in each hand, standing on a podium that says “World’s biggest meat-eater”, is also not empty. > If suffering gives me no reason to doubt that an omnimax god exists, so the observation of Bob’s comically meat-oriented lifestyle gives me no reason to doubt that he’s a vegetarian. Not to mention that his comically meat-oriented lifestyle is still much less evidence of him eating meat than there is of “unnecessary suffering” existing in reality. It would be more like claiming there’s no evidence of Bob eating meat when he’s just killed a cow with his teeth and devoured it to the bone in front of you. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2026, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/379 "2026-01-26T21:43:12Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > The first part – that the set of universes is non-empty – is trivially true for just about any combination of claims that we can think of. Well, mutually exclusive concepts don’t have any overlap, of course, which is how we got here—the PoE alleges the mutual exclusivity of God and evil, so showing that there is such an overlap is a nontrivial result. But anyway, as long as you agree that there is in fact such an overlap, all the rest necessarily follows. The existence of this overlap means that at least _some_ possible worlds in which God exists contain at least _some_ evil. This then means that _on average_, a world in which God exists contains some evil. This means that the _expected amount_ of evil in a world in which God exists is non-zero. But this means we’re at the point with the raisin cookies: whether observing evil _increases_ or _decreases_ your confidence in the hypothesis that God exists depends on exactly _how much_ evil you should expect to find (whether there are 10% or 60% raisin cookies). But both situations in which a given observed quantity of evil increases or decreases this confidence are compatible with the knowledge you have available, which is merely that the expected amount of evil is non-zero. Consequently, any claim that it should decrease this confidence appeals to knowledge beyond what you have. > [@Voyager](#): > > But if you remove that requirement it is possible to paint the wall green, so any entity constrained not to is not omnipotent. Sure, but there isn’t any entity constrained not to. As you agree, not doing x doesn’t mean not being able to do x. > [@Voyager](#): > > You appear to be saying that there are different levels of omnipotence No, I am very explicitly and with explicit construction saying that there is only one notion of omnipotence, which isn’t constrained by just doing a particular set of things, such that an omnipotent being, while doing only good things, is still fully omnipotent (after all, anything else is just nonsense). > [@Voyager](#): > > an entity constrained to do good by omnibenevolence is just as omnipotent as one unconstrained An entity that only does good is not ‘constrained by omnibenevolence’, it just… only does good. It just chooses a particular set of things to do. Any omnipotent being chooses a particular set of things to do. Either that means they’re constrained to only do those things—which is obviously absurd—or there’s just no reason to think an omnipotent being that only chooses to do good things is any more constrained by this choice than an omnipotent being that only chooses to do funny things, or grandiose things, or boring things, or any number of sets of things that doesn’t happen to have a special name attached. > [@Voyager](#): > > You should be able to conduct the mental experiment of “the entity does bad. Now what are the consequences?” You have not done this so far. Why not give it a try? You’re just confusing yourself again into thinking that ‘doesn’t do x’ means ‘can’t do x’, so if I now (as I’ve done a number of times before) answer ‘then it wouldn’t be omnibenevolent’, you’d just go ‘aha! So omnipotence and omnibenevolence are incompatible!’, and that’s simply not what follows from that. That’s why I introduced the construction from the ground up, where an omnipotent being just chooses to do good, without thereby losing any powers, thus showing explicitly that the two are compatible. But you refuse to engage with that. Why not give it a try? > [@Voyager](#): > > What justification do you have for calling god’s allowing or causing a tsunami which kills hundreds of thousands good unless you pre-assume omnibenevolence? I don’t believe in any omnipotent, omnibenevolent, or otherwise omni- being, so there’s nothing I have to reconcile with anything. I’m just pointing out that your attempt at constructing a conflict between omnipotence and omnibenevolence doesn’t work, because it’s easy for an omnipotent being to just act according to a maxim that always works towards the good—which is all omnibenevolence means. > [@Voyager](#): > > Without omnibenevolence as a property an omnipotent being can do anything logically possible. And with it, too. If omnibenevolence were just some mysterious force that stays an entity’s hand whenever they were about to do evil, that entity wouldn’t be benevolent at all. If you’re forced to only do good, you’re not good, you’re just unfree. And while you’re asking me for textual evidence for the reading of omnibenevolence as intrinsically related to will, having apparently neglected to follow the link to Aquinas’ writings, why don’t you supply a cite for the idea that omnibenevolence is some cosmic force that railroads God into only doing good? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2026, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339/380 "2026-01-27T00:21:54Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > The question is if the author has the entire book plotted perfectly, and **then** he changes something, was he correct in thinking he had the entire book plotted? > I’d say the writer is omnipotent but not omniscient, so no problem. **After** the book has been completed and published, assuming no changes in later editions, the writer is omniscient but not omnipotent, since he cannot change anything published. I think understand what you’re saying. It makes sense. But only from God’s perspective - outside of the universe. If God has committed the universe to a fixed form, He no longer has the power to change it and therefore lacks omnipotence. Omniscience and omnipotence are in my view only well defined with respect to a given domain. Hypothetical events like God finishing His divine plan or making changes to it are temporal and extra-universal; they do not map to our concept of time. Such events are not cognizable due to the consistency paradox. There is no point in _our_ timeline where God changes His mind (contrary to a literal reading of Exodus 32:14 and Jonah 3:10, most theologians hold that God is immutible, see e.g. Numbers 23:19). Omnibenevolence does not follow, but omnipotence and omniscience may be deduced. From our perspective, literally nothing exists or could exist except by God’s will and with God’s knowledge; by that virtue, God is always omnipotent and always omniscient. Put it this way. Here’s a timeline for a story, and the timestamps of when the author finished plotting each part. | story event (in chron order) | author wrote on day | | --- | --- | | Main character born | 1 | | main character finishes school | 2 | | main character gets sick | 7 | | main character marries | 3 | | main character dies tragically in prime | 6 | | ~~main character gets retires~~ (removed) | 4 | | ~~main character dies of old age~~ (removed) | 5 | Now it is day 8 and the author is reading the story out loud. He gets to the part where the character, on his death bed, asks if God always planned for him to die this way. The answer is yes, from the character’s perspective, because “always” refers to storybook time, not the author’s count of days 1-7. ~Max [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-violate-free-will-if-the-person-was-never-given-the-desire-to-do-something-in-the-first-place/1025339.md?page=20)