Free will doesn’t imply that everything is possible - why the free will response to the problem of evil fails

I’ll set the stage real quick here. The problem of evil essentially says, if there’s an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god, why do we observe so much evil in the world? One of the classic responses from theists is that god had to permit evil in order to allow for an even greater good - human free will.

Here’s why that fails. There are plenty of ways in which we are already physically limited. For example, god could have created humans with the ability to snap their fingers and make other people’s heads explode. He could have created us with the ability to shoot powerful laser beams from our eyes. He could have given us the ability to barf poison, or to steal others’ breath, or to turn other living beings to gelatin with a single touch. He didn’t do any of those things. Those ways of harming others, of committing evil acts, are closed off to us. Do we have less free will because of it? No, because having free will isn’t the same as having the ability to choose whatever insane and harmful thing we might want to choose. We have fewer options, but we’re still free.

But now think about the actual world. We have the ability to purchase handheld mechanisms that launch projectiles at other sentient creatures and cause grievous harm. We have the ability to swing our limbs about and inflict serious injury on other beings. We have the ability to hurl toxic insults and collapse the self worth of our fellow humans, to furtively put things in each others’ drinks, to run each other over in cars, to drop bombs from flying machines that collapse entire cities, and on, and on. What would happen if we simply could not do those things? Or even a few of those things? If whenever you tried to physically harm someone, I don’t know, a force field appeared that stopped you from hitting them. If atomic bombs just didn’t work. If hurtful words always went unheard. Would we be less free?

If you agree that we are free now, even though we can’t turn others to gelatin with a touch, then I think you have to agree we could still be free even if we didn’t have the ability to cause harm to others in conventional ways. Free will and the inability to inflict evil are not incompatible. God could have given us free will and also set up the rules of the world in such a way that evil would not arise. He didn’t do that.

So god is either not omniscient, not omnipotent, or not omnibenevolent. Or, and this is my favorite, he doesn’t exist.