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

[Esquilax]

@Esquilax

While interesting, the examples you, Esq., provide (the misfired gun & flaccid rapist) are not enough by themselves to validate the premise that an all-knowing, beneficent, and all-powerful god could actually create a perfect world (whatever that means) And your idea of a perfect world seems vague and not particularly well thought out. The potential rape victim is spared, but what happens to the frustrated rapist. Being thwarted and frustrated, even from a wicked desire, is also a form of suffering. To remove all frustration means preventing people from desiring what they cannot have without causing harm to themselves and others. So let’s see where that line of reasoning leads…

You have, unfortunately, strayed quite far out from the bounds of my initial argument, here. I'm not discussing a perfect world, just the fact that god could easily make marked improvements to the one that we currently live in, and that the christian standard response to this, that it would violate free will, is nonsensical.

As it stands I'm not terribly worried about the frustrations of the rapist, any more than I would be worried about the injuries a criminal incurs while fleeing from the police, and for the same reason; they wouldn't be feeling that way if they weren't doing something they weren't supposed to do in the first place. Their suffering, such as it is, is entirely their own making, and as such they are hardly innocent victims, as the raped person or murder victim would be.

I don't think a perfect world, for every person, at all times, is possible without violating free will because some people are psychopaths who would find the suffering of others to be a part of their perfect world. But one who had the powers of a god could make a markedly better world without violating free will, certainly.

Making people incapable of considering arson or robbery does not eliminate all potential harm and subsequent suffering. The ignorant and inattentive can cause damage without harmful intent. A grease fire can start while the cook is distracted by a co-worker. People can build houses without knowing they sit on a fault line. In order to prevent all potential harm, humans would need to be fully aware of all potential the consequences of their actions, including the actions of other humans. This creates a problem: all knowledge is limited to what can be known. Since the future does not yet exist, it cannot be known. No one, not even a god that can know everything that it is possible to know, can exactly predict all the outcomes of one’s actions. As such, the actions of free agents may inadvertently bring about harm and suffering, absent moral accountability.

But there's a difference between "suffering" and "human produced suffering," the latter of which being what the problem of evil seeks to address, and the free will argument seeks to excuse. It'd just be a bizarre argument if someone asserted that the reason god lets accidental fires start is because he doesn't want to violate free will; the fire wasn't a conscious action and therefore the decision-making processes of the person involved aren't violated, since no doubt they would prefer that the fire not start at all.