While an interesting situation, this isn’t at all comparable to the relationship between God and His creations. God, we must not forget, is literally the foundation of reality – without Him, His creations cannot exist, not just because He wouldn’t have made them, but also because it is unintelligible for a being that came into existence to say “I exist” without appealing to the only thing that exists of it’s own nature (exists “a se”), God.
Similarly, God is literally The Good. He isn’t just some creator – He is the foundation of everything that is Good, worthwhile, noble, and profitable. His commands are thus not arbitrary, not could they potentially have been different, as in the computer programmers commands. His commands are what will ultimately be to the creature’s benefit. They are in fact, the only things that will make the creature’s life meaningful, because all things draw their benefit from the one Good.
Finally, in the case of the computer/programmer, we are actually discussing a case where both are intellectually equal, or possibly where the computer may be more intelligent than it’s creator. God, who knows all true propositions, will by definition know more than any finite creature that knows only a finite number of truths. If a lesser mind reasoned that God’s commands were wrong, it would be because of it’s lack of full knowledge and it’s imperfect reasoning capacity, not because God has come to an inaccurate conclusion.
In your example, the primary conflict you seem to be concerned about is the conflict between the free will the computer has been given and the commands the computer has been given. If the computer freely wills to disobey its commands, how can the creator say this is bad? Now, remember, as we discussed, in God’s case, the situation is different. It’s not just that the commands have been given – the commands are literally an expression of the nature of moral reality. They are true statements that cannot ultimately be denied anymore than one can deny gravity, or 2+2=4. So for the individual to disobey God’s commands is the result of faulty reasoning and logic on it’s side, comparable to the computer attempting to deny the truth programmed into it that 1+1=2. Neither the computer nor the God-created individual can operate properly without these truth’s they have been given.
So indeed, it seems to me perfectly correct to say that the free will of the individual is objectively wrong. Though it is allowed to deny reality if it prefers, God can no more tell the individual that this is “ok” anymore than He could tell the computer that 1+1=3. In fact, ultimately neither the computer nor the individual actually believes these incorrect propositions. If they did, they would not be able to function properly (in the computer’s case because all its software would stop functioning, in the human’s case because the moral law is engraved onto our hearts as deeply as the law of mathematics is engraved into the computer’s software).
In a sense, the punishment is a direct result of the disobedience itself. It’s as if the computer programmer told the computer “Ok, you can believe 1+1=3 if you really insist on it, but be aware that your software will stop functioning and I’ll have to pull you off the internet because if you interact with the other sentient computers, you’ll hurt them.” The “punishment” is simply a necessary result of the disobedience and is in fact required to protect the other computers. So I really see no conflict between the free will given to humans and God’s commands to punish them if they disobey, as the punishment is simply a natural consequence of the moral law and could not have been different anyway.
