MORTAL: Once my will is gone, how could I possibly choose to take the pill?
GOD: I did not say you would choose it; I merely said you would take it. You would act, let us say according to purely deterministic laws which are such that you would as a matter of fact take it.
MORTAL: I still refuse.
GOD: So you refuse my offer to remove your free will. This is rather different from your original prayer isn’t it?
MORTAL: Now I see what you are up to. Your argument is ingenious, but I’m not sure it is really correct. There are some points we will have to go over again.
GOD: Certainly.
MORTAL: There are two things you said which seem contradictory to me. First you said that one cannot sin unless one does so of one’s own free will. But then you said that you would give me a pill which would deprive me of my own free will, and then I could sin as much as I liked. But if I no longer had free will, then, according to your first statement, how could I be capable of sinning?
GOD: You are confusing two separate parts of our conversations. I never said the pill would deprive you of your free will, but only that it would remove your abhorrence of sinning.
MORTAL: I’m afraid I’m a bit confused.
GOD: All right, then let us make a fresh start. Suppose I agree to remove your free will, but with the understanding that you will then commit an enormous number of acts which you now regard as sinful. Technically speaking you will not then be sinning since you will not be doing these acts of your own free will. And these acts will carry no moral responsibility, nor moral culpability, nor any punishment whatsoever. Nevertheless, these acts will all be of the type which you presently regard as sinful; they will all have this quality which you presently feel as abhorrent, but your abhorrence will disappear; so you will not then feel abhorrence toward the acts.
MORTAL: No, I have present abhorrence toward the acts, and this present abhorrence is sufficient to prevent me from accepting your proposal.
GOD: Hm! So let me get this absolutely straight. I take it you no longer wish me to remove your free will.
MORTAL: (reluctantly): No, I guess not.
GOD: All right, I agree not to. But I am still not exactly clear as to why you no longer wish to be rid of your free will. Please tell me again.
MORTAL: Because, as you have told me, without free will I would sin even more than I do now.
GOD: But I have already told you that without free will you cannot sin.
MORTAL: But If I choose now to be rid of free will, then all my subsequent actions will be sins, not of the future, but of the present moment in whch I choose not to have free will.
GOD: Sounds like you are pretty badly trapped, doesn’t it?
MORTAL: Of course I am trapped! You have placed me in a hideous double bind. Now whatever I do is wrong. If I retain free will, I will continue to sin, and if I abandon free will (with your help, of course), I will now be sinning in so doing.
GOD: But by the same token, you place me in a double blind. I am willing to leave you free will or remove it as you choose, ut neither alternative satisfies you. I wish to help you, but it seems I cannot.
MORTAL: True!
GOD: But since it is not my fault, why are you still angry with me?
MORTAL: For having placed me in such a horrible predicament in the first place!
GOD: But, according to you, there is nothing satisfactory I could have done.
MORTAL: You mean there is nothing satisfactory you can do now, but that does not mean that there is nothing you could have done.
GOD: Why? What could I have done?
MORTAL: Obviously you should never have given me free will in the first place. Now that you have given it to me, it is too late – anything I do will be bad. But you should never have given it to me in the first place.
GOD: Oh, that’s it! Why would it have been better had I never given it to you?
MORTAL: Because then I never would have been capable of sinning at all.
GOD: Well, I’m always glad to learn from my mistakes.
MORTAL: What!
