and I'm a lazy sod as well

i don't even capitalise "i"

Lol shut up you guys, don't turn this into a grammar exercise

"can god give free will?" is a semantic exercise in itself as I pointed out earlier - we only have an illusion of free will, as everything is predetermined by god

To you maybe, I already stated free will must be something that the individual takes for himself. Well maybe more that we already have it, just some of us need to take the initiative and say "I have free will!"

The Catholic God, theoretically, could do so. It would definitely be more likely if the Creator wasn't all-knowing, but I definitely say that it could still be done.

In spite of the theoretical omnipotent being knowing all that has come to pass and all that will ever come to pass, and having full control of who he does and does not create, all that would be needed for free will is God not giving a damn.

Basically, assuming there is a creator for this argument, we could have free will based on his creating the Earth and the first human, then completely turning his back on all of humanity and allowing things to come to pass as they would. Perhaps he's already seen the end, gotten bored, and just let us go about playing things out until that end.

Also, I'm using free will to describe our own finite judgments and decisions. Likely, that's what is meant by free will in the first place, as we don't have the ability to do anything beyond that. So basically, I'll say that yes, there could be free will even if there is a deity who is our creator, but it is only free will within a certain set of parameters laid forth by this deity.

Whatever you deliberately set out to do implies free will. One can always choose not to act/react in a certain way.

Wether or not God has given it to us is not an adequate question; it implies God's existence which isn't established or even logically consistent. But given that he exists as an omnipotent deity, there's no reason why he couldn't give us free will, just as I can set my Sims to 'autonomy 100' (or whatever it was) and leave them for themselves.

my Gnostic God is one who is not bothered much also, being impartial and non-judgmental

but I still believe everything is already written on the wall (so to speak) as is this and this will happen, you can't change it - time is linear (in our perception) so that's it, I did this (I typed this out), i have no say in it, the die has been cast even before I wrote this

Yes we can say "I have free will!" but we must never forget to include "Thanks to God!"

i'm not quite sure if i understand what you've said but since the wordings are great, i'll say i agree.

And 'zing' went the gauge of the troll-o-meter.