Ok, then let’s assume there is a sufficient number of choices to be deemed chaotic. You have 1000 condiments for the sandwich at your disposal, it’s chaotic. However none of them are options which are evil.

That’s not varied complexity, that’s still just a lot of one thing - condiments.

Significant varied complexity would be more of 5 condiment choices, 2 bread choices, 3 ham choices but 1 might be expired even though it’s your favorite, 3 vegetable choices, peanut butter, 3 jam choices.

And then between all that, other things are going on too. You might suddenly decide you don’t want sandwich. A roach is wondering if it should scurry across the bread you laid down or near your feet, possibly causing you to injure yourself with the knife. A painter who was painting something dark red may knock accidentally on your door leading to a misunderstanding. And more.

None of these choices are evil, but they can lead to suffering or the potential to make a bad choice. And then there’s still defining “evil”. Would eating ham be evil? What about the jam? It could involve minor deforestation for monoculture - is that evil? Is spraying crops with pesticides evil? What about GMOs? These are things that depending who you ask, range from evil, bad, neutral, to good.

So do humans who play tic tac toe lack intelligence? There is a finite and very small number of choices a player can take. It’s a patterned outcome.

False equivalence. The thing is, you can play tic-tac-toe without intelligent decision. You could win a game through sheer randomness by just flipping a coin (heads = x, tails = o) and randomly picking a square. Want to take it further? You can draw the # on ground in the autumn, and leaves could just fall in place (red vs yellow) and form what looks like a game of tic tac toe. You don’t need intelligence to play tic tac toe, even though an intelligent being is capable of playing tic tac toe. You do need intelligence to invent tic tac toe out of unrelated nothingness, however.

So what turns a controlled environment into a chaotic environment?

Honestly, don’t know. Maybe mathematicians do, but I imagine it’s a philosophical question. The only agreed upon thing would be that significant varied complexity is what is needed to be determined a chaotic environment, philosophically. How significant would be the disagreement.

And what is the problem with a patterned outcome? Intelligence was still used, so what do the results matter?

Well, we’re still trying to determine exactly, precisely is “intelligence”. But ChatGPT is definitely not intelligent, that I do know. I think Google really helped elucidate that point recently to Americans.

The problem with this is than an all loving, omni-benevolent being not just has love for all, but maximal love for all, which contradicts the notion of willingly allowing suffering to exist in any form.

Again, that depends what kind of “maximal” love. You have maximal love for your parents for example (assuming you had good parents), but that’s definitely not the same as romantic maximal love.

If there’s a God and they created everything, well, I assume the “maximal love” would be akin to a human creating something and loving that creation. Considering the massive difference between an omnipotent being and a mortal human, I’m hesitant to even say it’s similar to a human and self aware robot.

Maybe the old Honda bots?

Actually yeah, at least from what I’ve read up on such religions. In many cases, you lose free will in said paradise. But there’s still debate on what exactly said after life is, as expected.

In some cases you don’t go until some apocalyptic event happens either. Then there’s karmic religions, which technically fill all the requirements in the chart but can obviously be perceived as unjust by us (those suffering now were bad in the past and vice versa). Hence why I mentioned at some point to some “first you have to define evil”. Although I guess the real thing is maybe “first you have to define justice”. If we humans can’t still figure out what we actually want, kinda hard to define a benevolent omnipotent being.

For example, let’s say everything starts from the get go as “good”. Well then, “good” also doesn’t exist, because there’s no duality to compare it to. Even if God knew it was good, we wouldn’t. Next, would intelligence be capable of existing? Some knowledge would inherently be “evil” even if it lead to good. What about evil through good intentions? When you eliminate all these factors, you’re basically eliminating humanity as we exist, because intelligence is no longer possible; at least, assuming “evil” is defined as “anything with the potential to be used for evil” as well.

Now you could just say “well an omnipotent God could just eliminate any of those possibilities” but now with direct intervention there is DEFINITELY no free will. But then you might say “so they are not omnipotent”, in which case a paradoxical creation could solve that.

God could make a parallel universe in which all this coexists invisibly with the “paradise” universe, and even another where no good exists too. But only 1 of these universes need God to reside for him, thus he would “exist and not exist” simultaneously. Some Christians have this interpretation when it comes to explaining heaven and hell, btw.

But that does bring us back to if free will can truly exist without evil. If you’re forced into a single alignment, would you be any freer than an AI programmed to not be evil?

Ah, you’re right, I did forget the “all-loving” part actually. My bad. I thought you were talking about the Christian Trinity paradox.

As for chaos needed for determination of will, that’s because will requires intelligence. A controlled environment doesn’t lead to intelligent choice but rather patterned outcome. ChatGPT is a good example of this

As for the “all-loving” part, an argument could only be made for that, from my perspective at least, depending on how you define “love” here. If they sees us the same way we see creations we make and love, then it would explain to some degree why the suffering is still allowed. If you build a rugged all terrain vehicle, you might love what you made, but it’s purpose would still be go out there and get scuffed up. I know it’s not the same for us - a vehicle ≠ a person - but to an omnipotent creator being, it could be the same point of view that we have towards a vehicle. In which case it would fit that condition on a technicality.

I do have a question though - what would it mean if he made both a universe where suffering exists, and one where none does, simultaneously? What would that entail?

Oh from the get go you mean.

True, but there could be a meaning or reason behind the suffering we still don’t understand either way is my point, because we still don’t understand enough of ourselves or the universe yet to know if it’s the better choice either. After all, before the rat utopia experiment, it was assumed having literally every need met perfectly would lead to happiness rather than disaster. It could be that he’s done both for reasons unknown to us, creating both our dimension with suffering and one where suffering never existed.

Or there could be no reason at all, and God is an omnipotent being that is neither good nor bad, much like the ancient Greek concept of the God Chaos - they just “are”.

You technically could, but surprisingly, a lot more people take issues with their entire personality, memories, and consciousness being altered than with their bodies.

Because again, that’s what you are proposing as “good”.

I’m not denying they could do that if they’re omnipotent.

I’m saying that what you’re suggesting is the extermination of humanity as is, and that some would consider that evil.

But it could be suffering is by nature what allows us to enjoy good. You can’t have a human if the human doesn’t know not good, because how would you enjoy what you can’t appreciate? The rat utopia experiment kinda shows what happens when you introduce a biological being evolved for stressors to a perfect environment. And humans may already be going through something similar but not as bad in developed countries (the lower birth rates, increased depression, etc) as what happened to the rats in the rat utopia.

So essentially what you’re proposing is not allowing humanity to exist, and that it’s a good thing.

It’s not an invalid argument, but do consider some might consider that in itself evil, which brings us to the biggest real question: defining “evil”.

The sandwich analogy doesn’t work, because there are not enough variables to cause significant chaos to the point of where a will can be proven. Will implies thinking and decision making in a chaotic environment so as to assume intelligence, but being only able to choose three choices and starting out with 2 demonstrates no more intelligence then random chance.

Intelligent choice is part of free will, because otherwise it is only instinctual choice. But intelligence by nature allows malevolence, because it allows you to create choices where there were none.

Also, a paradox doesn’t disprove the existence of a god - if anything, any omnipotent being of any sort would be paradoxical by nature, as omnipotence can only exist in a paradoxical state. If you’re wondering how that could be possible, light is a good example - it is both a wave and a particle, and yet it exists. Being a paradox doesn’t exclude the possibility of something existing.

Lastly, omnipotence doesn’t exclude desire. For example, if you suddenly gained omnipotent abilities, would you actively use them all? Would you change certain things? Would you change yourself? Would you create something?

Why?

The same questions could be true for any omnipotent being.

All that said, this simplified chart is missing some options, but then condensing philosophy into a simplified chart is already quite reductivist anyhow.