DOCTRINE THAT GOD MERELY TOLERATES US TO DO EVIL AGAINST HIS WILL IS
RIFE WITH LIES AND HALF-TRUTHS
The best way to tell a lie is to tell half of the truth or enough of the truth to help the lie to spread and become believed. You are using the truth to misdirect. So not only have you a lie but you have the abuse of the truth. A lie is a fake truth and the real truth is dismissed and shoved from the place where it belongs.
One terrible but very prevalent lie is that God does not permit evil as in saying we can do it. He empowers us to do it of our own free will but the responsibility for it is ours alone. He is responsible for letting it happen but is not responsible for its malice and arrogance. So God permits me to sin but does not produce my sin as sin but he produces only the faculties I use to make the sin and the circumstances around it.
Religion draws us to terrible doctrines by using the power of the lie. Its approach to innocent suffering under God's loving care is horrific and ideological. Given how prone human nature is to making idols of ideas you would think religion would be careful! It is not only a lie but sheer irresponsibility.
No believer in God thinks that he lets everything be random. It is believed there are many things he determines or sets like clocks. He determines things by his own agency. The rest is left to its own devices because he decrees they are to be free. Either way you have control. The prisoner who cannot move is completely controlled. The prisoner who is allowed to move his harm is still being completely controlled. He only gets permission from a controller to move his arm. Since God makes random forces what they are then they only act random but are not really random. God permitting anything does not mean he is a bystander but he is deeply involved. Religion wants you to look at the word permit and think it is the same as a parent forced to permit their child to make mistakes and learn the hard way. There is in fact NO comparison. Free will means I can randomly choose but we know the random is not true if there is a God.
If you believe in God then you will have to hold that he allows us to make mistakes or be evil. You believe you use your will to create evil. That is what you say. But let us be precise. You are saying you create contained evil. How is the restraining done? You attempt evil and God contains it. Does he alter it from its inside or does he use external force? Or both? If he can get “into” evil then that means he is involved in it as a producer. Evil is your choice but if he has that much control over your choice then he is involved and choosing with you and through you. He is like a mind controller who gets the person to steal one gold bar instead of two. Stealing is stealing. This is more about consequences than stopping evil. It is affirming evil within limits. It is about cosmetics.
All evil can backfire. All destructiveness needs a framework to contain it. Evil people don't want things to go out of hand beyond a point. To argue that evil is somewhat okay because a God contains it is just to bluntly argue for evil. If we are evil ourselves then wanting a God who allows evil and ringfences it is consistent with that.
Religion advances the idea of God respecting us so much that he has to let us decide between good and evil even if it means we will choose badly. Something letting us do harm could as easily be motivated by the hope we will mess up as the hope that we will not. It comes back to what side the believer will take - not reason. It is an act of faith. Religion should not be commanding you to agree with it. It should be spontaneous and up to you. You have the right to feel religion is manipulating. That it won't permit that is a clear sign that it is.With choosing to do good or bad, it is heavily based on what our instincts tell us could be right or wrong but that has nothing to do with it being right or wrong. Those who say they regard God or Jesus as their authority, their Lord, are assessing them from the viewpoint of their own authority. It all comes back to what the person thinks. It is a way of deflecting from how you decide they are worthy and that is what you base them on. It is about you investing them with authority you give them so the authority is really yours. They might have the power but you give them the authority and make it about you. It is you declaring what evil is and that if fits God. Who made you so wise that you could speak for God?
God cannot give you free will to do his good will when your service of him is really just another way of serving yourself. For you to say he has is a boast. That boast is terrible for it entails pronouncing on the suffering of others that is theirs not yours. It is not about you. Helping them is patronising if that is your attitude. Drop the hypocrisy.
Religion causes you to think its ideas about God and evil are mysteries and you are so amazing that you know of these mysteries and some idea of how to solve them. This needs to be seen for the huge arrogant claim it is. It is childish. Sprinkling mystery over the God and free will debate like pepper is a trick to make us doubt ourselves if we see any incompatibility.
The fact that God could be only permitting my evil not producing it or condoning it does not mean that is actually what he is doing. To say he is only permitting means nothing for I should also in the same breath say, "He is more involved than that. He is blameworthy." Your half-truth is abhorrent.
To sum up, God has more to do with your sin than you do and is complicit. And so are those who preach about how pure he is and how terrible we are for violating his will.
