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Line 66: − − == God's love for us as particular persons == − One proposed solution to the problem of evil argues that, although people in general could exist without evil, the particular people who now exist could not. The lives of all who now live are so deeply entwined with the evils of the past, that without all of those evils, or the bulk of them, everyone now alive would never have existed. In a perfect world, none of us would have ever been born; in a perfect world, people would still exist, but we would not be among them, nor anyone whom we love. If God loves people in general, the best thing He could have done for people in general would have been to create a perfect world for them to live in. But if God loves particular people — the particular people who now exist — the best thing He could have done for those particular people is to create a world containing whatever is necessary for their existence — in other words, the best thing God could do ''for us'' is to create the very world which now exists. God could have done better; but God could not have done better for us, only for other people. − − 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]] == − Rejecting God does not dispose of the problem of evil; evil continues to exist, and continues to be as problematic as before. While the atheist, having rejected God, no longer needs to justify the goodness of God to themselves ([[theodicy]]), now they are faced with the equally difficult task of justifying the goodness of their new objects of faith, humanity and the universe. Thus they turn to what are the atheistic equivalents of theodicy, [[anthropodicy]] (the attempt to justify humanity as good despite the great evils humanity has been responsible for) and [[cosmodicy]] (the attempt to justify the universe as good in face of the great evils it contains). These disciplines are as difficult as theodicy is. − − J. Matthew Ashley explains the relationship between theodicy, anthropodicy and cosmodicy: − :In classical terms, this is to broach the problem of theodicy: how to think about God in the face of the presence of suffering in God's creation. After God's dethronement as the subject of history, the question rebounds to the new subject of history: the human being. As a consequence, theodicy becomes anthropodicy — justifications of our faith in humanity as the subject of history, in the face of the suffering that is so inextricably woven into the history that humanity makes. Mutatis mutandis, the universe story brings with it the need for a "cosmodicy." How do we think about the presence of suffering, on a massive scale, in the story of the cosmos, particularly when the cosmos itself is understood to be the subject of history? How do we justify our faith in the cosmos?<ref>J. Matthew Ashley, "Reading the universe story theologically: the contribution of a biblical narrative imagination", ''Theological studies'', 2010, vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 870-902</ref> Line 85:
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no edit summary
He thinks there is no reason to question the possibility of "transworld depravity," and thus concludes that his defense fends off the problem of evil. Many philosophers - both theistic and atheistic - agree with this assessment{{who says}}, although there is no settled consensus. The problem of evil will not likely go away so easily, as the matter of non-moral evils (diseases, predation and natural disasters, for instance) cannot be solved by Plantinga's defense alone.
He thinks there is no reason to question the possibility of "transworld depravity," and thus concludes that his defense fends off the problem of evil. Many philosophers - both theistic and atheistic - agree with this assessment{{who says}}, although there is no settled consensus. The problem of evil will not likely go away so easily, as the matter of non-moral evils (diseases, predation and natural disasters, for instance) cannot be solved by Plantinga's defense alone.
== References ==
== References ==
*Plantinga, Alvin: ''God, Freedom and Evil'' (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's Publishing Co, 1977).
*Plantinga, Alvin: ''God, Freedom and Evil'' (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's Publishing Co, 1977).
[[Category: Philosophy]]
[[Category: Philosophy]][[Category:Theology]]