Saying that free will does not exist if there is any influence is absurd. Is your choice to, say, paint your house red or blue, or green suddenly not your choice if your mom suggests blue or purple? She certainly has influence, but you have the choice.
How is it that God possessed a "knowledge of good and evil" when He ordered Adam to not eat from that tree, if the concept did not exist until creation and someone other than God invented it? Did God "learn" something new?
Knowledge of something does not necessarily mean the implementation thereof; that is to say that the knowledge of something not the same as the doing of it. You're falling into a mode of thinking similar to those who say one cannot condemn something if they haven't tried it.
Gen. makes clear, God said that the man had "...become like one of Us, knowing good from evil". If we agree that the Scriptures claim God is immutable, unchanging, thus has always known what He knows, what did He know about evil if it did not exist?
Again, you are confusing existence with the possibility of existence; the practice with the theory.
If a man is going to pick red or green sox out of the drawer tomorrow at 10am, free will requires that God not know what choice He would make. Otherwise, God is seeing something which cannot possibly occur differently. If it cannot occur differently, then exactly how "free" is the man? And, if God does not know, are you claiming that God has no foreknowledge? Does He not see what will happen tomorrow? That is a pagan god, not Yahweh, the God of Heaven & Earth.
No, that's wrong; that's like saying that you knowing your drug dealing mouthy brother is going to get himself killed [if he doesn't stop] invalidates your brother's choice to stop or continue. Furthermore, it assumes that knowledge of the future invalidates the choices of the present. (This is hard to convey properly precisely because we are temporal beings, bounded by time.)
What I'm saying is that God's foreknowledge does not invalidate free will; they are not mutually exclusive.
What is it about the need to be free from God that even those who call themselves believers cling to such a concept? The Scriptures plainly say He turns the hearts of Kings, He causes the dice to roll a certain number, He sics Satan on men, He controls who believes. What is it that makes this an unwelcome truth? Here is my suspicion: They possess a reward system theology, rather than grace.
Ha! You really seem hung up on the concept that "free will" means "free from God [and all of God's power]" that is not so, God supports and sustains the whole of the Universe.
Why do you claim that the belief that I am responsible for my own actions, having free will, utterly negates a claim that I exist/am-sustained (as all in the universe are) because of God? It's akin, to use the computer metaphor, to saying that I believe that computers don't use electricity because I believe that they can compute; but the truth is that w/o electricity the whole thing is moot because that necessary component is missing.
Just because God keeps me in existence does not mean that I do not have free will. Not any more than not being arrested means that I have committed no crime.
God sends rain to the just and the unjust? (Yes or no).
How can a man be just [or unjust] if he is not responsible for his own actions? and if he is responsible for his own actions, how can it be just for God to punish him if he had no free will? (After all, if he has no free will then he had no choice but to act in that unjust manner and therefore holding him to account for them would be just as absurd as trying to hold a computer to account for following its program.)
Here is my suspicion: those who deny free will make excuses to sin. ("Oh, but Trayvon couldn't help attacking Zimmerman, it was his being raised in a poor neighborhood!")
Please re-read my claim. You just agreed that God had "knowledge of something...". My point was, what was that "something" that He already knew about? It was was evil. That He had not used it only means He determined to not use it. All things have there origin in Him and are sustained by Him, "upheld by the word of His power". Should he stop thinking about anything, that thing would no longer exists. This is basic biblical theology, unless you are a deist and believe the creation is now self-sustaining. Thus, evil had to derive from His mind and must now rely upon His willingness to use it, or one is viewing a pagan god.
Computers may compute using the electricity coursing through their circuits, but this is not the same as human existence. You do not choose because blood courses through your veins. The reality is much more complicated than that. God has determined your steps, the hairs on your head, the day of birth, death, where you live, what you do, how much you make, whether you believe. You may wish to consult the Bible, rather than the philosophers.
If creation ex nihilo occurred, then nothing, nothing existed before God determined to create. (Check Dr. Jack Crabtree, The Most Real Being). Now, as we look out there, evil exists. Is it the one thing that created itself? Is it the derivative of another created item which now possesses the power to create and sustain apart from God?
The biblical answer is, of course, no there is nothing which is not within the will of God and is not somehow contributing to the display of His glory. We do not have a "reactive" God flitting from problem to problem trying to cope with all of the bad little boys and girls. We have the One who rules all and is directing this grand, yet seemingly chaotic, story to a perfect end. Even the greatest sin in the universe, killing His own Son, was done because the Father, "...delivered Him up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, (using) you nailed Him to a cross (using) by the hands of godless men and put Him to death, And God raised Him up again,..." Acts 2:23.
If you believe, as the writer of the original article does, that God wondered what Adam and Eve would do, then you not realize the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. God thought of it, planned it, executed it and is executing everything you see around you.
This sound nearly identical to Erasmus' argument against Luther re: the Diatribe vs. Bondage of the will.