The free will defence attempts to show that belief in an omnibenevolent,
omnipotent, and omniscient God may be rational, despite the existence of
evil. At the heart of the free will defence is the claim that it may be
impossible,
even for an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God, to bring
about certain goods without the accompanying inevitability, or at least
overwhelming probability, of evil. The good in question is the existence
of
free agents, in particular, agents who are sometimes free with respect
to
morally significant actions and who are thereby responsible, at least in
part,
for those actions and the personal character which is a function of and
exhibited in those actions. The free will defender contends that if an
agent
is to be truly responsible for her actions, then she must be free to bring
about
both good and evil, and God cannot be blamed if such agents choose to bring
about the latter rather than the former.