This post makes an assumption that free will implies that an action is not predictable. I don't really think so.

Say you built a time machine. You blip an hour into the future, and you discover that, gasp, your brother is combing his hair. You go back to the present.

Now you know what your brother is going to do in an hour. But does this knowledge change whether or not your brother had the free will to choose to comb his hair in the first place?

Note the way I phrased this. I'm not arguing whether or not your brother had free will in the first place, only whether or not your newfound knowledge of his future choice changed whether or not he had it. If it changes, why? Assuming you never speak to him of this time machine of yours or what you discover of his future actions, then what you've done with the time machine and your observations has absolutely no impact on your brother and the factors involved with his decision to comb his hair.

We can remove time and make this plainer. If you and I meet for dinner, and I go to shake your hand, and you punch me in the nose, hey, when I feel the sting, I've just attained knowledge of your action. So does that mean that you had no free will? No, you might say, because the time of your decision has passed. But if knowledge of past events does not inhibit free will, why should knowledge of future events inhibit free will when we are really talking about God here, who is apart from time?

The point of all this is that if someone's actions are known, it doesn't mean they weren't truly one's own decision. God knows what shirt I'm going to wear tomorrow, but is it therefore his choice? I don't think so. It's my choice. In the eyes of an omniscient being, it's a predictable choice, but it's still mine. God's knowledge of that choice doesn't make it any less my free will choice as Darleen's knowledge of the shirt I wore today removes the free will involved with *that* decision.

I'll concede a few points to Stephen. Yep, God set up the "initial configuration" of the universe, so to speak. He's in charge of all physical laws, and not only does he know how things are going to turn out, but sometimes he manipulates the universe toward one end or another. But, being omnipotent, he created free will agents in that world that, even though he may know the result of our choices, nevertheless provided us with the *ability* to make whatever decisions that are within our physical power to carry out. Yes, he is responsible for much of the things and events that we consider when we make decisions (but not all; if it can be established that we have free will, it is trivial to establish that other people are responsible for many of the things and events we consider as well). But even so, God has engineered the universe to allow all people the freedom of choice and, what's more, the ability to make the right choices, when right and wrong are at stake.

So why is there evil in the world? If evil is essentially divergence from God's commands to us, then evil is the inevitable result of granting us free will, for if we all have free will, we may choose to work evil.

Today, there is a lot of evil, and there are a lot of things that are just "bad" -- things we would call accidents and so forth -- that aren't *evil* so much as simply bad things that *are*. But even those can be dated back to the first sin of Adam and Eve, the first time in history that humankind exercised free will to choose something against God's command. At that moment, evil entered the universe and corrupted it; prior to that, there weren't even natural disasters or other sorts of things we would call "bad" yet aren't the purposeful result of someone's actions.

I guess I started addressing Stephen rather than gremlinn at some point back there.

Anyway, I assume the next natural question is still "Why?" Ask me why long enough, and I admit I'll run out of answers. Hey, I'm still learning, just like anybody, Christian or no. But God's will was not for sin to enter the world in the first place, and I believe what God has been doing ever since is working in ways and opportunities for humankind to be redeemed from that decision by, essentially, reversing it on a personal level. He's basically been stalling before the full effect of the consequences of the decision to cross God to come to bear. Evil is in the world today because God chose not to vanquish it straight off, which would have meant destroying humankind without chance of redemption.

I've veered off the subject of free will, so I'll end here.