Fictional characters, as such, have a pretend existence, and so have pretended conditions of existence. At best they’re like memories of persons that once existed, being remembered by persons with actual existence – although they aren’t even that, because fictional persons never existed at all to begin with.
So there is no comparison possible except by category error, or by hypothetically comparing conditions of existence if the characters actually existed – which still wouldn’t be comparing conditions of existence with non-existent conditions of a non-existent existence to see which existent persons (the existent persons or the non-existent existent persons) would be “better off” compared to each other.
“I” can be better off or worse off compared to past or future conditions of my existence, so long as “I” still exist to have comparative conditions of existence. If I ever cease to exist, so does the only method of comparison except by the psychological confusion of other people who are imagining I still exist because they can’t conceive that non-existent persons do not really exist anymore to compare states of existence between.
“I” can be better or worse off in my conditions of existence compared to the conditions of the existence of other persons. My existence has value, and so in that sense has ‘more’ value (by having value at all) compared to the non-value of non-existence, but even then I’m having to cheat a bit for the comparison by imagining a zero level of value when non-existence is not even zero numerically compared to positive or negative real numbers. Non-existence is not a neutrally zero state of existence which can be considered better off comparatively than negative states of existence. (This is the error of people who regard annihilation as mercy, or suicide as still being an improvement of their condition if they ceased to exist afterward. They’re thinking of non-existence as though it’s a neutral state of existence and so relatively better than existing in negative inconvenience.)
“I” can be better or worse off in my conditions of existence compared to hypothetical conditions of myself or other persons, and so compared to proposed fictional characters whose pretended existence has pretended characteristics. But existent persons have value, regardless of their conditions of existence, that non-existent persons don’t have; which is why there is an ethical duty to improve the conditions of existent persons and not the pretended conditions of pretended existence of pretended persons. And even that comparison only works by positing pretended characteristics of fictional persons for sake of hypothetical comparison.
Our existence would have value even if we were in eternal conscious torment and the pretended characters were living happily ever after in a pretended heaven. Which is why our conditions, of the really existent persons, ought to be improved, as an ethical duty, whereas at best improving the conditions of fictional characters only counts as practice or perhaps as an illustration of principles. And that comparison is only possible by the non-existent fictional characters borrowing a sort of secondary existence from the existence of real persons. To ask if we’re better or worse off than something that doesn’t even have enough secondary existence to talk about, and so to ask a comparative question about, is a category error. It would be like snipping off the end of the sentence before getting to the It wouldn’t even be like asking whether we’d be better or worse off than Thursday or the hypotenuse of a triangle, because those at least conceptually exist whereas the totally non-existent does not even conceptually exist anymore (if it ever once did).
And our existence would have value, by the way, and more value as real persons, compared to the mere conceptual existence of Thursday or a hypotenuse (either of which borrow whatever secondary value they have from the value of existent persons), even if we were living in eternal conscious torment, which is why there would be an ethical duty to improve our conditions but no ethical duty to improve the condition of the hypotenuse of a triangle – if that was even possible, but I don’t think the conditional existence of a hypotenuse can be improved or degraded. So is the value of our existence somehow threatened because a hypotenuse only has value thanks to the existence of real persons? Or would our existence in perfectly convenience conditions be comparatively unimportant somehow because a hypotenuse cannot have its conditions of existence (so far as it exists) improved or degraded? Of course not either way!
I can go even farther than that, and argue that a real person annihilated out of existence ought to be brought back into existence, because the real person has real value. But it would be nonsense for me to try to argue that an annihilated persons ought to be brought back into existence because their condition of existence currently as non-existent ought to be improved; although I could coherently argue that they ought to be brought back because their condition of existence before they ceased to exist ought to be improved.
Because you’re still imagining that the non-existent Jason had conditions of existence that could be improved by loving Jason. God acted to give me existence at all, thanks to which reality I now can have conditions of existence to be improved or degraded. When I didn’t exist, I didn’t have conditions of existence to be improved or degraded; consequently my condition of existence didn’t improve by my starting to exist and so to have conditions of existence.
It’s a nonsense question confabulated out of English grammar and confusion of thought. There is no answer except to correct the confusion of thought. The value of a person’s real existence does not depend on an impossible improvement in the conditions of existence of something that doesn’t exist yet to have conditions of existence (and so which isn’t even “something that doesn’t exist yet”). The value of an existent person comes into existence with that person, and is why that person’s conditions ought to be improved – and not falsely improved by annihilating the person out of existence either. Which is one (although not the only) answer to why double predestination would be ethically wrong. Its wrongness isn’t due to God taking a person with completely neutral conditions of existence (which is what is being imagined for comparison as non-existence) and then hopelessly degrading that person’s conditions of existence – although that would be wrong, too, if a non-existent person actually existed to have conditions of existence to be degraded. But that’s a nonsense proposition, perhaps confused with a sequence of events describing a person actually coming to have existence.
Only if they’re only basing it on a category error. The moral repulsion doesn’t need to depend on the non-existent non-characteristics of non-existent persons being somehow degraded.
An uncreated person doesn’t exist to have conditions of existence to degrade or improve. The perma-damned would be worse off than if they were not perma-damned, and they would be worse off than existent persons who are not perma-damned, and if hypothetical non-permadamned persons existed instead of non-existed the perma-damned would be worse off than them, too.
The perma-damned would not be worse off than Thursday, or better off either, although they would have positive value which Thursday does not have (from which value Thursday derives whatever secondary value it does have); nor would they be worse off than fictional persons who only have a non-personal secondary existence; nor would they be worse off than utterly non-existent persons who do not even have fictional existence to even make a hypothetical comparison with if they existed, any more than the perma-damned would be worse off than the non-existent end of a It’s a category error to draw any of those comparisons.
No, He would be accused of hate for creating people He intended to suffer hopelessly. Their moral value does not depend on the nonsense of them having previously existed in non-existence to have existent conditions to degrade or improve, instead of non-existent non-conditions which cannot be improved or degraded because they don’t exist. Non-existent persons do not improve or degrade their conditions of existence by coming into existence: non-existent persons do not have conditions of existence at all. Existent persons are not better off or worse off than their previous existence as non-existent persons, and their value (including their moral value) does not depend on that nonsense being true.
But as long as you just feel in your heart that non-existent persons still somehow exist for their condition to improve or degrade by coming into existence, and that that nonsensical impossibility is the only way existence can have any value (so that if the nonsense is denied and rejected as nonsense then the value of a person’s existence must also be being denied), then you’re going to keep panicking about this non-problem. (And blaming me for your panic about it.)