My views on objective morality

[robvalue]

CL, let me talk about the morality of free will.  A rapist has the free will to rape a child.  You console yourself, perhaps, with the knowledge that he will eventually be held account by God for his actions.  But what of the child?  The child, you may say, will be rewarded with an eternity in heaven-- though he/she hasn't done anything particularly worth of reward.

It seems to me that God's version of free will shows a willingness on his part to let innocents suffer in order to give sinners enough rope to hang themselves.  And they do so by their own nature, which was anyway established by God.  It seems to me that if such a God is real, only a bad person would do anything but openly rebel against him.

You shouldn't be preaching the gospel.  You should be burning it.  Because YOU seem to me like a good person.

I've never heard an answer to this. Time and again, "free will" is brought up as a get-out-of-jail-free card for God's negligence. Examples like this are brought up to show the gaping holes in the idea, and then it just drifts off into the sunset after getting no reply, waiting for the process to repeat.

Any christian like to have a stab at this? (Anyone who is interested in defending God to some higher standard than "everything he does is great".)

Having the free will to choose to "follow" God, or not, is one thing. Why do you additionally need the option of raping children? Isn't just ignoring God enough for him? I mean, I ignore God, but I don't need to rape kids or bang nails into kittens in order to make the choice clear. So what is the point of allowing such actions to be possible? If he's so set on objective morality, he could make these things into an actual law, so that we literally can't do them (and wouldn't even think about wanting to do them). Why include this "feature"?

Cue "mysterious ways", which basically means I should ignore anything else the person has said on the subject up to this point, as they admit they have no understanding of God.