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→God's love for us as particular persons
We creatures really have no right to complain about God creating a world which contains evil, for without evil we would not exist — when we are complaining about God creating a world which contains evil, what we are really objecting to is our own existence, for God creating such a world is necessary to our own existence.
We creatures really have no right to complain about God creating a world which contains evil, for without evil we would not exist — when we are complaining about God creating a world which contains evil, what we are really objecting to is our own existence, for God creating such a world is necessary to our own existence.
The objection is made to this account, that it could also justify all kinds of evil acts committed by human beings, e.g. the mass murderer could claim that they comitted their crimes out of a special love for those who would only exist as a result of those crimes. On the contrary, this justification is only valid for a being who has perfect foreknowledge of the future — i.e. God. Although the mass murderer can know that certain people will only exist as a consequence of their mass murder, the mass murderer cannot claim to know and love those people as specific individuals, only as an amorphous potentiality. Only God can know and love those people as individuals, thus this is only a valid moral justification for acts of God, not for the acts of any lesser beings.
== The problem of evil for [[atheists]] ==
== The problem of evil for [[atheists]] ==