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  • There can't be free-will if there wasn't any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.

    So it's kinda like saying "if God is all powerful could He create a mountain on Earth but also make it so the Earth is a perfect sphere?" It's just pointing out that a planet that's a perfect sphere wouldn't have mountains and a planet with mountains are not perfect spheres. Which isn't exactly deep philosophical thought that needs a flow chart.

    Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong. Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger's Cat? Physics is false!

    But outside atheist dogma, most people accept there are things about the universe that are paradoxical. The Halting Problem doesn't mean we should discard mathematics, Schrodinger's Cat doesn't mean we discard Physics. Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn't accomplish anything.

    • There can’t be free-will if there wasn’t any choice. If there there are choices, there is the potential for evil choices.

      I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following:

      • strawberry jam
      • honey
      • grape jelly

      None of these are evil, yet they are choices.

      Also if proving something about religion is paradoxical proves that religion is wrong, by the same logic proving something about math or science is paradoxical proves those are wrong.

      This is a false equivocation. Proving that a fundamental part of a religion (such as a tri-omni god) to be paradoxical means everything built off of that idea is wrong. The same applies for math and science, but when large swaths of things in math and science get proven wrong because of a underling assumption that later turned out to be false, we get closer to the truth. That's how we went from a geocentric model, to a heliocentric model, to the understanding that there isn't any discernible center to the universe.

      Halting Problem? Math is false! Schrodinger’s Cat? Physics is false!

      Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.

      Following this trend means that all of the efforts by atheists to point out paradoxes in religion doesn’t accomplish anything.

      Nah. This paradox quite clearly debunks the idea of a tri-omni god presiding over the universe. This is a fundamental assumption within some major religions, and it's wrong. By extension the ideas built off of it are wrong.

      Do the same for math and science and you'll lead to new discoveries.

      • I am hungry. I decide to make myself a sandwich, with peanut butter, and one of the following: 

         undefined
                strawberry jam
    honey
    grape jelly

        None of these are evil, yet they are choices.

        If I throw a jar of strawberry jam at your head, is that not an evil choice? You chose to make a sandwich with that jam, but someone else can choose to do something evil in the same situation.

        Those problems do not prove math and science to be false, as they do not challenge fundamental assumptions.

        If you're saying that it's only because you don't really understand them. Mathematics was widely assumed to be complete, consistent, and decidable and then Alan Turing's Halting Problem came along and blew that out of the water. So it's been mathematically proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. Seems paradoxical to me! I guess that means the field of mathematics is just a weird superstition we should mock, right?

        • If I throw a jar of strawberry jam at your head, is that not an evil choice? You chose to make a sandwich with that jam, but someone else can choose to do something evil in the same situation.

          You've missed the point of the example situation. Throwing the jar at a person's head isn't one of the available choices. The only choices available are ones that do not harm to anybody, and are in no way sinful. Yet despite that, there is still a choice, there is still decision making.

          One my favorite books is Forever Peace, and in the book humanity has found a way to have digital connections directly into the human brain through a port at the base of the neck. The military uses it for remote control warfare drone warfare. The civilian population mainly uses it to connect directly into another partner during sex, which has the effect of feeling what both people are feeling mid-act. Eventually the protagonists find out that if people are connected in this manner for extended periods of time, they become "humanized", meaning they see all other humans as extensions of themselves, incapable of willingly harming other humans. They become pacifists to the extreme. The protagonists go on a fight against the government to humanize the entire world, and eventually they do so, ending all war and crime across the planet.

          If free will was really so important to create us with, god could have done so in a manner similar to the humanized people from the book. They still have the ability to make decisions and chose things for themselves, but the option to harm others is never available. If god exists, they could have done something like that, maintaining this need for free will.

          So it’s been mathematically proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. Seems paradoxical to me!

          That's not a paradox. Just because some things can't be proven doesn't mean everything can't.

          I guess that means the field of mathematics is just a weird superstition we should mock, right?

          No, because nothing in mathematics requires everything to be provable.

          Look through this list of mathematical proofs:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_proofs

          Not a single one requires "all mathematical problems have a solution" to be a premise.

          On the other hand, the false belief in a tri-omni god is in fact a prerequisite for a number of religions, and therefore are indeed weird superstitions deserving of mockery.

          • You’ve missed the point of the example situation. Throwing the jar at a person’s head isn’t one of the available choices.

            You're missing the point of free will. Putting a limit on people's choices is the antithesis of free will. I can make the choice to use the jam to make a sandwich, I can sell the jam, I can throw the jam in the garbage, and yeah, I can throw a jar of jam at someone if I choose. Some of these options are better than others, but free will means I make the choice, the choice isn't made for me.

            If free will was really so important to create us with, god could have done so in a manner similar to the humanized people from the book.

            Free will is important since it's the essence of creation. If we didn't have free will we'd all just be an extension of God, not distinct beings. If there are no distinct consciousness, then it would be just God and nothing else. If there's no distinct consciousness then there's nothing really created. It would be all just thoughts of a single being.

            For there to be distinct consciousness there needs to be the capability to make choices, which means there's there's the capability to make bad choices. For me to be incapable of throwing a jar of jam at you there would need to be an omnipotent being governing my decisions. But doing that would take away my agencies and destroy free will. Destroying things is the opposite of creation, which would be against everything God is supposed to be.

            Just as we are capable of making choices, God is also capable of making choices. Choice is something that an omnipotent being should be capable of, right? God's choice to not interfere with our consciousness is inseparable with the creation of free will.

            On the other hand, the false belief in a tri-omni god is in fact a prerequisite for a number of religions, and therefore are indeed weird superstitions deserving of mockery.

            And that is your choice. God isn't going to stop you from making this choice. But is mocking other people's beliefs making the world a better place?

            • Putting a limit on people’s choices is the antithesis of free will.

              There will always be limits on people's choices. I don't have wings, I cannot choose to fly. I don't own a nuke, I cannot choose to nuke something.

              So because limits on free will are inevitable, they should be reasonable, which means no evil.

              For there to be distinct consciousness there needs to be the capability to make choices, which means there’s there’s the capability to make bad choices.

              As is demonstrated by the sandwich example, even when no evil choice is available, choice is still possible.

              For me to be incapable of throwing a jar of jam at you there would need to be an omnipotent being governing my decisions.

              As is demonstrated by Forever Peace, this is not the case. The mechanism for Forever Peace being that humans see others as an extension of themselves, thus being incapable of harming others, but there is no limit to other mechanisms that would do this.

              Destroying things is the opposite of creation, which would be against everything God is supposed to be.

              That would appear to be blatantly false. The universe constantly is destroying things. Celestial bodies get destroyed every day. Stars die, black holes consume, planets get bombarded with rocks from space. This planet alone has had 5 mass extinction events.

              Not a year passes where there isn't some child starved to death or slowly killed by disease. Natural disasters wipe people's homes off the face of the earth and kill thousands.

              The universe is an incredibly hostile place.

              But is mocking other people’s beliefs making the world a better place?

              When it is ultimately a force for suffering, yeah absolutely.

              • There will always be limits on people’s choices. I don’t have wings, I cannot choose to fly. I don’t own a nuke, I cannot choose to nuke something.

                You can choose to fly because airplanes exist. Note how people can choose to use for transportation or use them to drop bombs or crash them into buildings with thousands of people inside.

                Also nuclear weapons exist and people can choose to drop them on cities and many thousands of people will die.

                It feels like you're desperately trying to miss the point to avoid having thoughts that conflict with your current belief (or non-belief if that's how you choose to term it)

                That would appear to be blatantly false. The universe constantly is destroying things. Celestial bodies get destroyed every day. Stars die, black holes consume, planets get bombarded with rocks from space. This planet alone has had 5 mass extinction events.

                Matter can't be created or destroyed and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Matter can be converted into energy (and vice-versa) but nothing is ever really destroyed. Do you consider this to be a religious belief simply because conflicts with your argument?

                When it is ultimately a force for suffering, yeah absolutely.

                How much suffering was caused by the religious oppression done by atheists like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? It's not just religious people that causes suffering. I'm pretty sure it's intolerance of the beliefs of others that the root of all of that suffering, which history has demonstrated that atheists are more than capable of. So I'm asking again, is your intolerance of the beliefs of others making the world a better place?

                • You can choose to fly because airplanes exist

                  That's not what I meant, and you know it.

                  Also nuclear weapons exist and people can choose to drop them on cities and many thousands of people will die.

                  Other people have that choice. I do not.

                  It feels like you’re desperately trying to miss the point

                  Given that you seemingly intentionally missed the point about the things that I cannot choose to do, I'd say this is projection.

                  to avoid having thoughts that conflict with your current belief (or non-belief if that’s how you choose to term it)

                  This conversation has nothing to do with the existence of god(s), it instead has to do with the existence of tri-omni god(s).

                  Matter can’t be created or destroyed and energy cannot be created or destroyed.

                  This is a false equivalence. If I burn down a building, it's been destroyed even if the matter of the building still exists.

                  Do you consider this to be a religious belief simply because conflicts with your argument?

                  Are you here to have a serious conversation, or just waste time?

                  How much suffering was caused by the religious oppression done by atheists like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot?

                  This has no relevance. You completely missed the point of everything I've said, I hope not intentionally. Because this line of thinking isn't coherent.

                  • Nope I honestly don't know what your point is. You gravitate towards absolutes more than most religious extremists do. Like if you're not an omnipotent being with every power you can imagine then you have no choices? But then you also think that the fact that world is some primitive video game where there's only very simple A) B) C) style options it would be a paradise and you're angry at God because the world doesn't work like that. Personally I find it frustrating when a video game limits my options to that degree and the option I want simply isn't there. Doesn't feel like I really have a choice if I'm only allowed to do the things they were considered to be valid options by someone else.

                    Yeah having choices makes for problems, but those are our problems to deal with.

                    This is a false equivalence. If I burn down a building, it’s been destroyed even if the matter of the building still exists.

                    And the atoms from that burnt building will go elsewhere and allow for the creation of new life. Nobody ever teach you about the circle of life, Simba?

                    Because this line of thinking isn’t coherent.

                    I think we're basically done here. You're just rejecting facts that conflict with your inflexible world view now. Atheists have killed a great many people in history, that's a fact. You reject that fact because you want to believe that religion is the source of everything bad in the world. Can't face the reality that a lot of evil has been done without religion being a factor, and a lot of evil has been done by people that think of religion similarly to how you think of it. It's almost as if intolerance is the problem and it's the same problem if it's coming from a religious person as it is when it comes from an atheist. Being intolerant towards all other beliefs than your own doesn't make you better than others, even when if you do everything you can to deny that you have beliefs.

      • 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.

        • You make the claim that a will relies on some idea of chaos, which definitely requires some actual explanation.

          The amount of choices one has is irrelevant in the comparison to random chance. If the person uses reason to decide for one of several options, they, in the most common sense, clearly have acted out of free will. Assuming that a free will exists in a physical universe, but we're in metaphysics anyways.

          I am not sure what it even means to create choices where there were none. If you end up making a decision, then it clearly was an option to begin with, by the definition of what that word means.

          What pointing out the paradox here entails is that amongst the presumptions we made, at least one of them must be false. The argument used in the OP does not disprove the existence of some divine being at all and it's not trying to. It's trying to disprove the concept of a deity that has the three attributes of being all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing. In the argument given, it is shown that at least one of these attributes is not present, given the observation of evil in the world.

          Your comparison to light being described as a particle and a wave is to your own detriment. The topic of this duality arose in the first place from the fact that our classical particle based models of the universe began to become insufficient to correctly predict behaviours that had been newly observed. A new model was created that can handle the problem. The reason this is a weak argument here is that no physicist would ever claim that the models describe the world precisely. Physical models are analogies that attempt to explain the world around us in terms humans can understand.

          In your last question, you make the mistake of misunderstanding the argument once again. You grant the person omnipotence and leave it at that. The argument is arguing about the combination of omnipotence, omniscience and all-lovingness. The last of these deals with your question directly, explaining the drive to make the changes in question. The other two grant the ability to do so without limitation.

          This chart isn't reducing that much at all. It's explaining a precise chain of reasoning. It may or may not be missing some options, but you haven't named any so far that weren't fallacies.

          • 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?

            • 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

              So what turns a controlled environment into a chaotic environment? And what is the problem with a patterned outcome? Intelligence was still used, so what do the results matter?

              This all seems quite arbitrary.

              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.

              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.

              it could be the same point of view that we have towards a vehicle.

              "You are so lowly that it is permissible to harm you" is not the point of view of an omni-benevolent being.

              • 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?

                • 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.

                  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.

                  The rather arbitrary requirement of chaos is present, a choice is still at hand meaning free will is still present, all without evil.

                  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.

                  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.

                  • 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.

                    • 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.

                      This doesn't fundamentally change what I'm getting at. Of all the choices, none of them are evil. Yet they are still choices.

                      None of these choices are evil, but they can lead to suffering or the potential to make a bad choice.

                      Call it evil/suffering/sin/etc, the label is irrelevant to my point.

                      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.

                      I don't think you quite understood what I was getting at, so let me rephrase. An intelligent actor with free will and an unintelligent actor without it will both have patterned outcomes to games of tic tac toe.

                      So patterned outcome cannot be a deciding factor for what is and what is not free will.

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