Hey um by the way the devil gave you free will, not God.
like it’s part of the Bible. In Genesis (the first creation story specifically) the devil (a title which here means “evil trickster demon” but recently has become synonymous with Lucifer or Satan) told Eve that she would not die if she ate the fruit (true) and that she would be like God (sorta true, humans gained self awareness, free will, the ability to create, etc.)
when she ate the fruit she gained the capacity to choose right from wrong because it was essentially the first time a human, not God, created evil.
without the devil we would not have free will.
thank him, not God.
.... If humans didn't have free will before the Fall, how were humans able to deliberately choose to eat the fruit that God told them not to eat? Because Adam and Eve disobeying God by eating the fruit sure sounds like they were capable of making free choices before they ate of the fruit.
So I'm choosing to engage with OP (and by extension @apenitentialprayer) on their basic Garden of Eden hermeneutic, which is very much one I don't agree with, but for the sake of argument...
Prior to eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve had free will in the sense of being able to make volitional choices, but not in the sense of understanding the moral weight of their choices. When God tells Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree, he doesn't say not to do so because that would be disobeying him, but for a very practical reason: "for in the day you eat of it you will die" (2:17)
But the Serpent has a counter: "no, you will not die" (Gen 3:4). And he's right. Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the Tree and do not die. And God feels threatened. "Now that humankind has become like any of us, knowing good and bad, what if one should stretch out a hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!" (3:22).
Death is not the natural result of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (and due to some Hebrew grammar shit it should definitely not simply be called the Tree of Knowledge), but a protective measure and punishment taken by God to a) protect God (or in the Hebrew "us") from being like him, being made in the likeness of God, having access to the same type of information as God, and immortal and b) to punish Adam and Eve for a volitional choice they had no concept of a reason to disobey other than a consequence that is very much not the actual immediate consequence of eating from the Tree.
God is grossly unfair to punish Adam and Eve for this, but his choice to keep them from immortality still makes sense in terms of a desire to protect his unique status.