Mainly because few theists are really interested in examining the response all that closely.... what they desire is an 'answer' and once they have one, the matter is closed.... literally.

An omnipotent, omniscient creator must obviate free will, because this 'creator' has perfect responsibility for his creation. This is necessarily so, as this creator is perfectly responsible for every parameter of existence. Every parameter of existence must be contingent upon this creator's fiat. Whatever exists, exists contingent upon this creator.

 So it follows that the creator shapes both the character of the 'chooser' as well as all the options that 'chooser' can choose, meaning that the creator cannot avoid being fully responsible for every outcome. What's left to be within the responsibility of the chooser? Whatever a theist points to, whatever element of character or personality or temperament must itself be an existent which exists, precisely, exactly as it is, contingent upon this god's fiat. An existent that could be different, based on this god's fiat. An existent, which if differen, would lead to different outcomes.

 To say that the 'chooser' bears responsibility would imply that the chooser is able to step outside the parameters of existence and create a situation that supercedes the fiat of an omnipotent god. 

 Why do christians miss this point? Because christians seem to suppose that are given set of parameters of existence exist necessarily. They miss that it is a contradiction to suppose that there could could be both an omnipotent creator, and , at the same time, hold that our world must somehow still be precisely as it is. We can call this the Panglossian error.

But, we know from basic logic that every parameter of existence must be contingent upon an omnipotent, omniscient creator. And this logical necessity is what destroys the 'free will' theodicy...

 I discuss this in detail here:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/god_the_iron_worker

If free will does not lead us to better moral decisions (true if it has nothing to do with our moral decisions), it is not a high good, and is irrelevant to the PoE.

Not sure what your point is, here...

This is directed at those who seek to explain away the Problem of Evil by invoking Free Will, which is not possible in a world featuring an omnipotent and omniscient creator god. 

From the point of view of living entities, there certainly is suffering and pain and death.

Both evil and good only have meaning from that perspective. It's not that evil is the absence of good, but that each is defined in terms of the other.

You seem to have missed the point of this post.

 It is true that free will itself is highly philosophically problematic, but that is not the issue.

It is also true that the New Testament, as many Christian sects have recognized, explicitly contradicts the notion that human free will can meaningfully exist (at least in the all-important decision of whether or not to accept god), though of course apologeticists have their usual plate-spinning field day with this. This simply adds to the validity of my argument here.

You have proposed several versions of the possible resolution of the problem of Evil, which always amount to tearing down one leg of the triangular paradox.

These responses attempt to create wiggle room, but cannot do so with compromising either god's omnipotence, or omnibenevelonce, or declaring that all evil - in the sense of things that cause pain and suffering to human beings and other living creatures - is some sort of illusion, or offset by some higher good (the glory of god, or some such meaningless nonsense).

But what I am specifically objecting to here, and still waiting for any defense of from our friendly neighborhood theists, is the particular construct that has become the most consistently repeated Christian apologetic attempt to resolve the problem of evil by claiming that evil is all the fault of humans, and god needs to take no responsibility for it, despite being omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, because he granted free will to humans.

I don't think you are trying to support this construct, and so your points while certainly interesting the context of a discussion of free will, are not really relevant to this thread.

Well, clearly we see this from very different perspectives.

It's not that I am trying to "demand" a logically impossible conception of god, it's that the Judaeo-Christian god concept is logically impossible.

It's not me that believes in a being characterizable by the "big o's" - those are simply the characteristics claimed for the Judaeo-Christian deity.

And they do carry with them logical impossibility, just as you suggest - it is one of the most common attempts to deny that impossibility that I am trying to address here, and it is one we have all seen and heard countless times from theists.

These theists who propound this view, I think, would generally not consider a view that modifies these cherished attributes as "more sophisticated," but as a sort of heresy.

I also don't think that modifying the generally accepted attributes that define the monotheistic god results in a more sophisticated god-concept - just a more vague and less meaningful one.

As it seems to me, any deistic concept is either logically impossible, or in direct contradiction of everything we understamnd about the universe, or both - unless it is too vaguely defined to discuss coherently, or else so removed from reality that it has no relevance to human affairs, like the god of Aristotle, or that of Spinoza.

If you think you have a concept of god that successfully avoids any of these objections, throw it out on the board and I'd be glad to discusss it - but it doesn't really belong in this particular thread.

Rather, this thread is a challenge to the many theists who have embraced and repeated the formula of claiming that free will is not only possible in the face of a (fully) omniscient and omnipotent god, but also that it somehow serves as an answer to the Problem of Evil.

The reason I keep trying to deflect the subject change is because the apologetic construction I'm objecting to is so very commonly used, on the boards and anywhere else theist/atheist discussions occur.

I'm wondering whether anyone who has used it or does regularly use it is willing to step up and debate its validity (clearly you do not fit in that category); and I don't want this thread to turn into a completely different discussion, which is what you seem to be trying to do.

Of course, just because people can make up words like omnipotent, omniscient or omnibenevolent does not mean that any such characteristics could truly exist.

In fact, I'd say they are nonsense words.

But this argument is directed at the people - mostly Christians, around here - who use the excuse that god gave us free will and we screwed up everything to try to explain away the apparent conflict between their god concept and the reality of suffering in the world - not to mention the eternal suffering to which their god supposedly sentences unbelievers.

It is because their god-concept includes these self-contradictory and logically impossible attributes that they find themselves proposing other logical absurdities to support the first set.

It would seem that you agree with me about this, and do not suppport the standard monotheistic attribution of the big o's, as you call them, to your concept of deity.

When I have time, I'd like to start or participate in a thread that attempts to define what attributes are required af a proposed entity in order to reasonably call it a god, particularly a monotheistic god.

But I'd prefer that this thread be a place where those who regularly trot out the apologetical chestnut I'm trying to address here might stand up and defend it.

If you think you have some concept of god that is not too vague to be discussed meaningfully, and not too attribute-free to be totally irrelevant to human existence even if its own existence were postulated, I think you should propose and support that god concept and defend it against the rebuttals that will surely come.

If your god concept is not supposed to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then it is not susceptible to the Problem of Evil objection.

If your god concept is not characterized as the omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe, then it is not susceptible to the criiticism that it renders us all puppets in a hollow show.

So you have no need to attempt to use these two issues to cancel each other out, which is very specifically the dodge that I'm trying to focus on here.

But, since nobody seems inclined to defend the apologetic shell game maneuver, despite relying upon it consistently in debate, I guess your subject change doesn't really matter.

Bingo. All the atheist does is demand that the theist be logically consistent - that he 1) concede that the bible affirms that 'god' is omnipotent and omniscient and 2) concede to the ramifications that necessarily follow from these claims.

heheh... that's what I say in the link I provided above....