Why create Hitler?

Extract

‘If God knows how people like Hitler are going to behave, why does he create them?’ One reply to this objection goes as follows. It is impossible both for God to know what Hitler is going to do and for God to decide not to create him. If He is not going to create Hitler, there will be no Hitler to do anything and no future act for God to know. God’s knowing what Hitler will do presupposes the decision to create. God does not first know how Hitler will act and then decide to create him. It is the other way around. It is as if God is ‘surprised’ by the results of his decision to create—not that he learns something he did not previously know, but that he knows from all eternity something he would not otherwise have known. The decision to create is, in a sense, taken blindly.

While it is true that God does not know what people are freely going to do unless He decides to create them, it is also the case according to many that without having to know whom he shall choose to create he knows what people will freely do in case they are created. He is able, therefore, to take into account these hypothetical choices when deciding to create. If this is true, then the problem of evil becomes more acute. God creates with the prior knowledge of moral evil. One then has to show that the good which comes from creation outweighs the evil byproduct.