Thank you all for the detailed and interesting responses. I've been discussing this with a group of Christians in another forum, as well, and would like to share the results of that endeavor, in order to continue this discussion. Their arguments did nothing to quell my doubts and only left me with the following, which none of them had a response to.
The other member stated: "However, free will does not mean that mankind can do anything he pleases. Our choices are limited to what is in keeping with our nature. For example, a man may choose to walk across a bridge or not to walk across it; what he may not choose is to fly over the bridge—his nature prevents him from flying. In a similar way, a man cannot choose to make himself righteous—his (sin) nature prevents him from canceling his guilt (Romans 3:23). So, free will is limited by nature."
This statement is along my lines of thinking, which led me to this:
"That sums up my point nicely, yes. free will is multiple choice. the nature of man is a limiting factor, which God imposed upon us. Therefore, he gave us the capacity to sin, and the space to do it in.
My biggest doubt is about how any of this adds up, rather than sounding like a cobbled together explanation of why we're here, in this painful and frightening existence. God could have made it any way he pleased, so he HAD to have chosen this painful world for some reason. Every reason anyone gives me of why we must suffer could be fulfilled in any other way that God chooses. He chose for us to suffer and sin, even though the knowledge that comes from contrast and duality could be delivered without us suffering and sinning.
If sin is such an affront to him, why give us such incredible capacity for it, and dispose our animal natures to indulging in it? How could anything Satan does to tempt us fall outside the purview of God, knowing all things to come, every choice, every move? Why does he leave us here to suffer and sin, and then be sent to hell for things he allowed for us to do, but people call it free will? It's not free, and he's ALWAYS KNOWN we would do it, yet he lets us. He equipped us to sin, allows the conditions to exist in which we can sin, and then sends us to hell because of it? If there is no freewill (as we seem to have established) then it's a rigged game, and we're being punished for no real reason."
Describing this world, and ourselves, as systems or programs is a good way of looking at it, I think. I don't see how our free will (or sovereignty) could lie outside the bounds God has placed upon us. It is impossible for us to operate outside of the limits of his creation and those placed upon us, isn't it? Therefore, we are programs executing within a larger one, called the universe, all designed by God and running in the fashion which he intended.
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