# Does it violate free will if the person was never given the desire to do something in the first place?

**URL:** <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>\
**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")\
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**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 23, 2026, 1:45am 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/1025339/343 "2026-01-23T01:45:33Z")

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> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#):
>
> As always, you’re cordially invited to point out the flaw in the argument that 50+ years of debate have failed to find.

The flaw is that an omnipotent being by definition can do anything, therefore there’s no way anything can be “necessary” for it. An omnipotent wants something to be so, and it is.

And decades - millennia in fact - of _attempts to evade the issue_ doesn’t change that. The flaws in all those arguments are blatant, they are just ignored by the people making them because otherwise they’d have to admit that their entire belief system is _utter nonsense_ and this whole debate over Christian dogma is on the level of arguing “[Can Superman tear his own head off?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-superman-tear-his-own-head-off/345543)”

Just more pretentious, and with the difference that people will actually kill other people over it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the whole tri-omni concept is full of paradoxes, that people _ignore_ that it’s full of paradoxes, and that we _very, very blatantly_ do not live in a world that would be created by anything approaching such an entity. No amount of sophistry, stubborness and evasion changes any of that.

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