Free will is a problem?
Absolutely!
Free will means there's responsibility attached to our choices. If there's a price to pay for a given choice, the bill comes to us. Free will means that when we mess up, we are at least partly at fault. It's hard to blame someone else for choices that we made. It's much "nicer" to be able to say, "I was made that way", or "It's so-and-so's" fault. We can absolve ourselves of all responsibility. The Problem of Free Will is article #2 in the series: Predestiny versus Free Will. Click button to view titles for entire series
The opposite approach is to take the one that many Christian denominations take, where they say God predestined everything. Oddly enough, that puts them in the position of saying that a "good" God is responsible for all the bad things that go wrong in the world. They also say that those who are saved are saved because God predetermined who would be saved - and everyone else won't be. I have problems with this predestiny approach, some of which I've written about already in The problem of Predestiny.
Having been a math major in college and taken a number of logic courses, I also understand the inherent questions that come up with my previous article. It's very hard to prove a negative. The Problem of Predestiny goes over a number of reasons why Predestiny cannot stand up to close investigation. If you haven't read it yet, I encourage you to do so - although it's not required to understand The problem of Free Will.
The Problem of Free Will is going to be a positive proof that not only does Free Will exist, but that Free Will was given to us by God. Further, it may surprise you just how long we've had that free will. And, since this particular point wasn't covered in The Problem of Predestiny, it may surprise you just when Free Will was given to us.
If you're thinking really early for this gift of free will, you may remember this from Genesis -
Ge 2:19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
Seems reasonable, since Adam named all the animals, after God told him to. However, there's a difference between "choose" and "free will". Looking up both "choose" and "free will" in dictionary.com brings up an interesting distinction for "free will" -free will in Culture free will definition
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