God and Free Will

I see and hear religious people constantly making excuses for their god.  I simply laugh at the posters that show two sets of footprints that become one set because the theory is god is carrying the faithful.  I read apologies like When Bad Things Happen to Good People and The Shack that make the argument that god made us and gave us free will and now he/she will watch over us, care about us, hear our prayers, yada yada yada, but he/she is reluctant to intervene in the exercise of our free will.  BS.

The first question that comes to my mind is, does god have free will?  Does the almighty have the ability to make decisions on his/her own and act on those decisions?  Or, is god bound by some law that he or she created that forces god into the role of spectator on the sidelines of human activity?  I would argue that it is reasonable to assume that god would not be able to give humans free will if he or she did not have free will.  It was a decision on god’s part to give humans this gift.  Therefore, by definition, god must have free will.

The Bible is full of stories of god choosing to act when he or she was not forced to act.  The flood, the parting of the Red Sea, turning water into wine, calming the waves, healing the blind, forgiving the sinners, raising Lazarus, etc., etc.  In each of those stories the message is clear.  God decided to act, decided to intervene and change the natural laws he or she theoretically established.  In other words, god cannot make a rock he or she cannot move.  He/she made the laws and he/she can choose to alter those laws.  Talking through a burning bush that does not burn clearly violates the laws of physics, and yet he/she supposedly did so.  Not to mention rising from the dead.

So, if god has free will, how does he or she decide how to exercise that will?  It is in answer to that question that all Christians begin to apologize for god.  They would say god has a plan that we are not privy to and that whatever happens is part of god’s plan.  If that is true, god has a terrible, mean plan.  In The Shack god assured the dad of the murdered daughter that he/she was with her to the very end.  Great.  Why not stop the kidnapping in the first place?  In Why Bad Things Happen to Good People the argument is much the same:  god set laws in motion and will not intervene.  But that is not true.  God does intervene if you believe the Bible.  God does intervene if you believe in miracles.  So the question is, why doesn’t god choose to intervene every time a faithful believer beseeches god to act?  Can god’s plan include the death of thousands due to cancer, death of thousands due to airline crashes, death of thousands due to homicides and suicides?  It is totally unreasonable for a so-called loving deity to allow such tragedy.

Yes, god must have free will.  And if you choose to worship a god who may drown you in a flood or let your child die because of some unknown plan when believers know full well that god could intervene, then you are at least a sucker and at worst a gullible person suffering from delusions.  Or, your god is either impotent, deaf or mean.