In the free will debate, many religious apologists/excusigists claim that their god gave us free will so we could freely choose to worship it. And since we have free will we can also choose to do wrong things, even patently evil things. (Bad humans, bad!)
So, then, according to this religious narrative, their god then gave us rules of behavior to guide our actions. WTF? This equates to “these rules are really really important and you must follow them, except you don’t have to.”
As I often encourage, let’s take a step back. If the creator god were to create human beings who did not want to do bad or evil things (I have known a great many of these folk in my life, they already exist), then there would be no need of moral rules or laws, no? If this were the case, could human beings choose to worship that god or not? I think so. There is no threat involved either way, so they are free to choose. This is not “free will” per se because some choices are off the table, but those choices aren’t on the table when the question is “Do you believe in this god and will you worship it?”
Only theists would think that not beleiving in their god is evil. Muslims who stop beleiving in Allah are to be killed. In Christian history, anyone who declared they didn’t believe in Jesus could be killed. (Christians have been Christians longer than Muslims have been Muslims and some lessons come only over time. It is no longer the practice of Christian religions to burn atheists at the stake. Hey, they had a near 600 year head start in weeding out the barbarities.)
If one doesn’t subscribe to the rules of a religion, not worshipping their god is an open decision, not a sin or grievous error.
It is easily seen why religions co-opt local moralities (usually via force or violence). So, the claim is “do not follow your rules, follow our rules.” This is part of the forced conversion game plan. In Islam, you either convert or agree to be a slave to Muslims, paying tribute as it were. Once you have converted, then the rules of their religion do apply to you and they will enforce them on you as that enforcement is part of the foundation of the religion. Without the threat of that violence people just wander away. European and Middle Eastern history is riddled with massive forced conversion campaigns, just ask any Jew. Enforcing moral rules puts the church hierarchies in a position of power. They can go around secular authorities and enforce their rules with impunity. (Sharia law anyone? It was the same in European Christianity when roving bands of “knights” had license to slaughter any villagers they found to be suspect, and any villagers who had just harvested a crop or brought in a flock of sheep or goats from a high pasture were automatically suspect because, well, the knights were hungry. Hunh, ICE agents before there was ICE.)
Uncommon Sense 