FIRST
Nobody truly enjoys receiving all the praise, rewards, and comforts of the world if it comes under near-total control, even if that control seems benevolent. Purely benevolent control does not exist—if a being were genuinely kind, why would it need to control at all? A being that cannot help but control is still controlling you. It makes no difference if God is compelled to control, because creation itself entails control.
THE ARGUMENT
If God is the creator of all things, then every thought, choice, and action depends on God’s sustaining power.
What is fully caused and sustained by another cannot be genuinely independent.
Therefore, human “free will” cannot be freedom from divine control if God exists as traditionally defined.
Giving free will and continuously maintaining it are both forms of control.
A will that exists only because God enables it at every moment is not self-originating.
If God knows and wills all outcomes, then no action can occur outside what God permits and enables.
Acting “against God” is impossible if all actions occur within God’s creative will.
Claims that God “self-limits” to allow free will fail, because an all-powerful being remains the ultimate cause even when choosing restraint.
Self-limitation does not remove responsibility or control; it presupposes them.
If God enables both moral choices and the conditions that lead to wrongdoing, then divine involvement increases rather than decreases in cases of sin.
A perfectly good being would prefer a universe with only good wills over one containing sin or the risk of sin.
Granting free will that can oppose goodness appears inconsistent with prioritizing perfect goodness.
Religious claims that free will is required for love are inconsistent if God is said to love without the ability to choose otherwise.
If freedom depends entirely on God’s power, then it is not truly one’s own freedom.
Dependence-based freedom is not genuine independence.
Freedom that is caused by another is comparable to expanded constraint, not autonomy.
Control over the will is morally equivalent to control over physical action.
Moral responsibility requires that choices originate in the agent, not in an external creator.
If God causes choices, then ultimate responsibility cannot rest with humans.
True free will would require that choices exist uncreated and uncaused by God. That condition is incompatible with classical theism.
God if he wants to be first in my heart cannot give me free will for it would make me effectively a god. If I truly have free will, then within my own sphere I function like a mini‑god. My choices would originate in me alone, not caused or authored by anything outside me. In that personal bubble, I would be the ultimate source of my actions, values, and direction. Nothing—not even God—would determine what I choose; at most, others could influence me, not create my decisions. Genuine free will therefore makes each person sovereign over their own will, ruling a small but absolute domain of agency.
Therefore, if God exists as all-powerful creator, free will in the strong sense does not exist.
Genuine free will is logically compatible with atheism, not with divine omnipotent creation.