It is standard practice to appeal to libertarian free will to explain how God’s existence might be compatible with much of the evil we see in the actual world. Libertarian free will has also been important to certain responses to the argument for atheism from divine hiddenness. But what is often neglected in appealing to libertarian free will, as others have pointed out, is an explanation of why God would create us with such free will in the first place. Laura Ekstrom argues that free will is simply not worth its cost. J.L. Schellenberg goes a step further and argues that, if it turns out we have libertarian free will, that is actually evidence against God’s existence. In this paper I discuss a couple reasons God might have for creating libertarian free will.

诉诸自由意志论者的自由意志来解释上帝的存在如何与我们在现实世界中看到的许多邪恶相容是标准做法。自由意志主义者的自由意志对于从神圣隐藏的无神论论点的某些回应也很重要。但是，正如其他人所指出的，在诉诸自由意志论者的自由意志时，常常被忽视的是解释为什么上帝首先会创造我们具有这种自由意志。劳拉·埃克斯特罗姆认为，自由意志根本不值得付出代价。JL Schellenberg 更进一步，并认为，如果事实证明我们有自由意志论者的自由意志，那实际上就是反对上帝存在的证据。在这篇论文中，我讨论了上帝创造自由意志的几个原因。