Interesting and thoughtful as John Forder's letter was, (January 14, 'Slaughter in God's name') it contains some fundamental misconceptions. Certainly God gave us free will, and I have yet to meet anyone who would have preferred to have been created a mindless, externally programmed automaton.

Hitler duly exercised his own free will in perpetrating his hideous crimes. His victims, however, were on the receiving end of Hitler's free will which, physically and mentally, prevented them from exercising their own.

Free will is about what we choose to do, not about what happens to us. People rightly value their free will; what tends to be downgraded is their capacity for 'free won't'.

Mr Forder asks: "What sort of God would create a world as this..." referring to the misery, agony and squalor which are all too evident today.

But God didn't create a world like this; the world He created was 'very good'. What we see today is the result rather of millennia of Man's wickedness and folly, and we are all reaping the consequences.

It's a pity that more 'free won't', aka morality, was not, and is not exercised.

Robin Field

Burneside