If you believe in the god of the bible, Then you have no free will, None

I appreciate the opportunity to debate this subject, And I hope we can come to an agreement or at least an understanding of the other's position. I would like to start off by looking at the title of this debate, As I think my opponent made a mistake with it. The title claims "If you believe in the god of the bible, Then you have no free will, None. " This title implies that a belief in itself can remove free will, However that is self contradictory; that belief, In itself has no effect on free will unless said belief is true. So what the title should be is something to the affect of "If the God of the Christian Bible is true, Free will does not exist. " However, Since he did frame the debate in such a way and, It seems, Tries to defend the idea that the belief itself makes free will impossible, I will address it. Before I begin, I do want to apologize, As I was unable to get the links to Youtube to work, Though I am sure my opponent aptly described it So I will begin by fulfilling his request of showing where in the Bible it says we are free. One verse is Galatians 5:13 which says "You, My brothers and sisters, Were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, Serve one another humbly in love. " I hope that that this sufficient, As I am trying to save space, However if you wish to know of more I would suggest you google verses about free will. As for the subject in itself, This topic is a matter of whether a Christian Doctrine is correct, Not necessarily Christianity as a whole. There are many Christians who believe that free will is at best limited, Such as many adherents of John Calvin's doctrine of predestination. That said, I do deeply believe in free will and believe the Bible is not only compatible with it, But teaches it. As for my opponents first argument, He claims that the punishment of crimes against the old law are against free will, However this is a misunderstanding of free will, And is actually necessary for free will to exist. To my first point, The definition of a person's will is defined as follows: "the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action. " This means that it is the ability to think one's own thoughts that is free, Not necessarily the ability to act on those thoughts in every instance. However, Even allowing this, In order for free will to exist, There must be consequences to our actions, And that can include the free will of others being used against us. Free will, In the Christian definition is the ability to choose between good and evil and whether to follow God freely. Freely means without the divine preventing you by directly controlling your thoughts. No threats of death can do that. As for God not having free will, It is just simply false. He is indeed omniscient, But knowing what one will do in advance of one's doing it does not make his action not free. God knows what is the greatest good and will do so based on his free will. He has the option not to, But his nature of being ultimately good surpasses his doing that. Knowledge of what one will do just simply doesn't equate with lack of free will. Now then, You bring up the idea of evil and hate and their compatibility with the idea of free will. This is by far your weakest point, God wanted us to be able to freely follow him or stray away from him. What you don't understand is by allowing us free will is what gives those evil things. He cannot logically make us free, And take away the emotional and mental capacities to do what is not good, That is just simply not free will. There is however a point you make here that is better than the idea that evil is incompatible with free will, And that is how could a loving God allow us to do atrocious things, Regardless if it is free or not; and there are several ways to answer that. I am a strong believer in Molinism, The theory of free will developed by Luis de Molina. This theory states that, While we are truly free in what with we do with the set laws of the world that we have, Free will doesn't require that God set those laws to give us infinite possibilities with those laws. This means that, Being all knowing, He knows out of the infinite possibilities of the world and the universe which will have the greatest overall good. In the Christian worldview, The greatest good does not come from this world, The greatest good for humankind is that the maximum number freely follow him and join him in heaven. Therefore, God allows bad people to freely do bad, So that the maximum good which we cannot see, Can come true. God knows what scenarios allow the most people to freely follow him, And knows how to make that scenario happen. So yes, Bad things and God and free will are entirely compatible. As for do we think that God will control us if he possibly could, The answer is simply no. Ask yourself what is the purpose of puppets following him? He wants us to freely follow him so we can freely love him and accept his love. In order for an all-good being to be all-good, He must be all-loving a loved by forced puppets and loving puppets is no love at all. If you want more resources on God and his compatibility with evil, I suggest you look at what William Lane Craig has on the subject. Specifically his videos Suffering and Evil: the logical problem and Suffering and Evil: the probability problem.