When did God give man Free Will?

[MineralMan]

72. Well, evolution is sort of a "needs must" sort of thing.

There is no imperative for sentience. Unless it provides a survival benefit, it's not necessarily a selection factor. For humans, it turned out to be an important selection criterion. For great white sharks, not so much.

Random genetic changes produce all sorts of effects, but in small increments. If they improve a species ability to survive or thrive, the changes are more likely to be passed on through reproduction. Sentience is apparently not a beneficial asset for the great white shark, but apparently was for homo species.

In some ways, it remains to be seen whether sentience really benefits our species over the truly long haul. It might. It also might not. We might survive so well that we deplete our resources or change the environment to make survival impossible. Are we still evolving? Probably we are, but our generations are long, so the impact of genetic changes doesn't become evident very quickly.

Humanoid species have been around for just a couple of million years, in one form or another. In the grand scheme of things, that's too short a time to measure our success, really. Consider the dinosaurs. All that is left of them are birds.