Is man was created in Gods image? (You said man like us)
I don’t see why an otherwise unspecified omnipotent and omniscient god would necessarily want to create man in his image. Don’t export the characteristics we may believe our universe has to the hypothetical universe envisaged in the OP. You have to start from those characteristics which are specified in the OP, i.e. omnipotent and omniscient god, and man with free will, or it’s a derail.
If so, what meaning does this have, if not the capacity for creation and judgement?
It seems to me that if man has free will then he has creativity and judgement, judgement as the mental ability to make distinctions but not necessarily moral distinctions, and not even necessarily objectively or materially effective or successful ones. Completely ineffective and unsuccessful people in our universe, for example in the case of the locked-in syndrome, presumably are still regarded as possessing free will and the ability to make distinctions.
If not, then it's not what I would consider free will.
The OP doesn’t specify “free will as envisaged by Horatio Parker”.
It doesn’t specify it at all so you need to start from the basic notion of free will we think we all have (whether we possess it or not), i.e. the ability to choose between alternative possibilities, such as going up rather than down if you’re standing at the 20th floor landing of a fifty-floor tower or thinking about Santa Claus living at the North Pole rather than the monster living at the centre of the universe.
Surely prisoners in the Gulag faced problems of free will. That power is the critical thing, not the limitations in which it works.
So we normally think of prisoners as necessarily deprived of free will?! Why would we need to keep them under lock and key?
Free will without knowledge or understanding presents no problems.
I didn’t say free will without knowledge or understanding but without knowledge and understanding of the universe outside the man’s own mind.
It may exist that way, but who cares.
That’s a metaphysical thread, not a moral one.
Without value choices are arbitrary and therefore meaningless.
Values are not necessarily moral values (otherwise we would always drop “moral” in “moral values” and careful speakers don’t). Values include whether I prefer working outdoors or in offices
Value: Usefulness, utility, worth, merit or importance to the holder;
Values: A principle, rule, code or standard, as of conduct, manners, activities, that is considered important, desirable or defining.
Choice implies value but not necessarily moral value. I don’t see that our basic notion of free will implies making moral choices. We don’t usually think of amoral people as unable to make choices according to whatever values they may have. Moral people certainly disapprove or think of amoral people as weird but not as being deprived of free will. Also, I’d be surprised if it was discovered that nobody was truly amoral.
Also, whatever seems meaningless to you may not seem so to others. I think we usually accept that people can be different, very different, including in the way that their brain works. Meaning is a personal and private thing that we are not forced to share with others.
I think exporting our moral system to the hypothetical universe envisioned in the OP is unnecessary to answer the question. In terms of both free will and the cognitive capabilities of our brain, moral choices are not substantially different from choices we make about the world or about whatever imaginary things we want to think about.
EB