The free will argument demonstrates that christians don't understand free will.

[Esquilax]

Free will is often trotted out by christians as a response to too many theistic problems to mention, but often the way in which it is used displays a complete lack of comprehension of how free will works, even within the bounds of the argument the theist is making.

God allows evil, the theist says, because without doing so we wouldn't have free will! But this argument seems to have curiously limited applications; if the theist wanted to, say, go swimming, but found themselves in the middle of the desert, would they complain that their free will is being impinged upon? No, that would be madness, and the theist would most likely simply recognize that they aren't in a position to do whatever they want at any time. But the premises of the free will argument can be slotted just as easily around "going swimming," as they can around "doing evil." They're both actions, and they both are only possible or not possible, according to christianity, because god allows them by keeping them conceptually open and creating the attendant physical forms and forces that make them happen, and yet our free will is only curtailed by the removal of moral actions, and not aquatic ones?

God doesn't allow you to swim in the desert and your free will is fine, but if he doesn't allow you to drown a person your free will is compromised?

Besides, we already live in a world where, under the premises of christianity, our free will is restricted; god created the physical universe and made conscious decisions as to the physical laws of it, after all. That's something he did without needing to, but the free will excuse submits that subtracting one more set of actions from the pot irreparably damages our freedom in some way that the theist refuses to elaborate on. Why is that so?

Perhaps we might draw a distinction between moral thought and moral action, but that doesn't resolve the issue either, given how much the christian god and religion concerns itself with thought crime to begin with. If our beliefs alone can convict us then clearly the actions don't matter to god; if I can commit adultery merely by looking at a woman lustfully then what use is physical adultery in that scenario? In that case god could curtail every evil moral action and still maintain his metric for who goes to heaven or hell, and in the process cut out a huge amount of suffering from the world. After all, our free will isn't dependent on succeeding at every act we attempt, anyway; if I fail at something, my free will hasn't been imposed upon, I just wasn't successful in my attempt.

Is this just missing the point, or do they really not get it?