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It is true that many abuses are committed. There is a widespread human tendency to try to prevent abuses by prohibiting the use. Following this rule, since freedom can lead to abuses, atheists pretend that God, in whom they do not believe, should have banned human freedom, in which they also claim not to believe.

Do you think God has done well in allowing freedom, if the alternative is that we all be automata, and despite our abuses?

I don't think it is my place to judge what God has done. :-)

What I don't understand, I try to leave to His providence.

When offering this question, I didn't intend you to judge what God has done, I just wanted to point out the double contradiction of the atheist position, who accuse God (in whom they don't believe) of not having banned our freedom (in which they also don't believe). Otherwise, why do they say "If God exists, shouldn't He have prevented Auschwitz?" (or the abuses performed by communists in North Viet Nam).

In his semi-biographical work on C.S.Lewis (Shadowlands, 1985), William Nicholson introduces the following dialogue between the English author, who has just lost his wife and suffers a deep religious crisis, and his brother Warnie, who asks him:
"If you were in God's place, would you give your creatures freedom to choose?"
"Yes."
"If you could go back, would you have chosen otherwise?"
"No."
So this is a divine decision where we can identify with God.

Just reading today's Good Friday Gospel, Isaiah chapter 52. The contradictions of atheism, like the arguments for socialism and communism, are like Satan's motivation for rebelling against God: Satan wants to be God's equal. Somehow he doesn't get that he is already as much like God as a created being can be: God IS, and God is love. Without love, you can't be like God. But Satan and the atheists don't get that. God's perfect love does not want to force us to love him back--love must be freely given or what you get is an unbalanced dynamic of control and submission. If we are in a right relationship with God and man, we don't need or desire to control others. Adam and Eve lacked the perfect knowledge of the angels so the serpent could lead them from innocence of evil to the Tree (knowledge of good and evil) where they would be tempted to try to be like God, an experience that Satan knew but Adam and Eve had to experience by an act of disobedience. What does God do? He turns the contradiction into the paradox of Felix Culpa, the happy fault that gives mankind the chance to earn a place in the family of God, and by sending his son to share human nature and through sacrifice and experience of the worst pains of our human condition we overcome the death and destruction that Satan instigated with an opportunity for eternal life and the loving family of God through the grace Jesus obtained for us on the cross. The control and power the far left seeks is most threatened by the values Christians cherish: love of God and family and our neighbor, all of which must be destroyed and their power nullified for communism and socialism, and the satanic mindset of atheists to succeed and validate themselves.

Manuel wrote: "When offering this question, I didn't intend you to judge what God has done, I just wanted to point out the double contradiction of the atheist position, who accuse God (in whom they don't believe)..."

Yes, as indicated by my emoji, my answer was intended in part to be humorous. But it is also serious because at root this is the atheist's argument: "If I was God and was all powerful I wouldn't permit suffering, especially not suffering of the innocent. Therefore, God does not exist."

There is an infantile, mindless, arrogance here, elevating the creature to judge the creator and it is inherent in the question. There is another answer, that which likely underlies Lewis's, without the possibility of choosing evil, good is meaningless. Love, Christian love, is a choice.

John wrote: "There is an infantile, mindless, arrogance here, elevating the creature to judge the creator..."

Yes, this is what C.S. Lewis meant in the title and content of his paper God in the Dock.

Well said, Madeleine. You might enjoy reading an ancient homily on Christ addressing Adam during his "descent into hell." In the Office of Readings for holy Saturday.
Dooley himself never addresses this question. He simply wades into the effects of evil-doing and freely chooses to do what he can to improve the lot of individual victims, even though he knows it is only a drop in the bucket.

Thank you, Jill! I will look for that reading.

Here’s the homily Jill mentioned.