Hey Chance,
I used to ponder these kinds of questions, too. I wondered what would ever prompt a perfect, complete God to do anything. Create stuff, dance, anything. I always act out of incompleteness. I'm hungry, I'm bored, I'm depressed, I'm feeling generous, something I want prompts my actions. What could God possibly want? And why hadn't he ever wanted it before the time he began creating? I usually swerved off at that point into some sort of a "time is different for God, he created time and doesn't exist in its flow like we do" sort of reasoning. But that doesn't really work either, since the Bible at least says he created the spirit creatures, and then the physical world. So what prompted the physical creation? What incompleteness did he feel that required him to create it? (I'm not asking for answers on these, it's just what ran through my mind.)
The argument "terrible things must happen in order to allow for freewill" doesn't hold water for me. I know for some it does, so maybe I'm just bull-headed about it. But it seems that even people with freewill could be made to live within certain boundaries. For instance, I have the freewill to punch my wife. I can draw a fist back, thrust it forward, and know fully well that I intend to impact her face. (She can actually take me down, so it would be very unwise to do this!) But at the instant before I actually made contact, God could stop me. He could punish me as if I'd actually done it, because had he not intervened, I would have. My freewill wasn't violated, I was still allowed to make the wrong decision. But more importantly, her right to be unaffected by evil in a perfect God's universe was respected.
I give my 6-year-old a ton of lattitude. He can watch pretty much whatever he wants on TV, play whatever game he wants to play, ask for specific snacks from the store. He gets an allowance to make his own purchases with. But I still maintain some control to prevent him from getting hurt or hurting others. He can't watch porn, he can't buy a gun, etc. If that's impinging on his freewill, then it's a fair impinging. If he knew what I know, he'd agree. And if I were God, then there'd be things I'd know that my human creations couldn't know, and I'd feel within my rights to keep them in certain boundaries. (Like don't punch your wife.)
Any "where would you draw the line"-type arguments fall apart when you remember that it's a perfect God that's drawing the line. Wherever he draws it, it would be the right spot. If you really, really disagree, too bad. Who's God around here, anyway? ;-)
The existence of evil against innocent people is about the strongest argument I have against the existence of God. I can't buy it until I can accept an explanation of it. And freewill just doesn't do it for me.
Dave
