First, I am a Christian who believes that God did create the world, but I also seek an honest discussion of the problems (both theological and cosmological) that such a belief presents.
Most Christians believe that God created the universe, but few Christians ask why he would do that. Christianity teaches that God is fully self-sufficient. If so, what motive would he have to create? To what end would he do that? Surely he wouldn't do so if there were nothing to profit? Assuming he had a purpose in creation, would this not render him dependant on creation and thus contradict the doctrine of divine aseity (that he is fully self sufficient and dependant on nothing outside of himself)? Would this not imply that God's state after creation was better than before, thus presenting an inferior pre-creation state which Christians insist is impossible? Theologically, it seems there is great tension between Christian beliefs concerning God's attributes and the belief that he created. I am interested to see what you have to say.
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Until theists can present valid evidence that god exists, I don't have any thoughts on your self-induced predicament.
You ask folks who identify as atheist to explain your god's motives?
*John:
"love compels Him to create."
The whole creation myth is full of self-contradictions. The so-called creator is omnipotent and omniscient, so how can it be "compelled" to do anything? Why "can't" it exist alone? It can do anything, can't it? How can "perfect" be subdivided into a father, son and holy ghost, as well as angels, demons, and of course humanity? Why would it need anything external to complete itself? How could it's creations turn out to be so flawed? According to the Bible, those flaws resulted in the expulsion from Eden, the Noah flood, and crucifixion of Jesus. Something created by a perfect, omnipotent being would by definition be perfect, wouldn't it?
The more you think about it, the more the creation myth sounds like the creation of imperfect beings struggling to understand a complex and often hostile universe by interpreting it in terms of human social constructs.
You have articulated well the tension. However, creation, fall, redemption, and restoration is the metanarrative of the bible's perspective on creation start to finish. If you assume that this was by divine plan rather than an unforeseen failure then the contradiction you presented vanishes because the perfect divine being created a world that perfectly is fulfilling his purpose.
What could his purpose have been in creation, fall, redemption, and restoration? The obvious answer in the bible is to look to the climax of the story, the crucifixion of Jesus. This is the climax in the bible's story and, if it is true that Jesus died to restore fallen humanity, then this was God's greatest expression of love, power, kindness, etc. in the history of the world. None of this could not have happened if sin had not caused the expulsion from the garden (the need for redemption and restoration), and thus even sin was part of the perfect plan. Thus, from God's perspective, if he planned the creation, fall, redemption, and restoration as the bible says he did, then creation did work out perfectly according to his plan. With this, I conclude at the very least that the bible is a literary masterpiece, but if true creation is a much greater masterpiece of divine expression.
Thus, "Why 'can't' it exist alone?" He could have, but he desired that his glory (the visible expression of his manifold perfections/attributes) might emanate through the creation, fall, redemption, and restoration of the universe.
Q: How many gods can dance on the head of a pin? A: Who cares.
Define the god you believe in. Prove that it exists. And then we will worry about why gods do things.
@leviathan: Since your god is a fairy tale so would be any attempt to answer your questions.
I think the OP assumes the god in his psyche is ascribed to by all people ascribing to a god.
If a man states that blue describes the color of the sky all who would hear him would witness it and have an identical frame of reference for blue. Send this man to tell all people in all lands that blue describes the color of the sky and all the world's population will know blue as a color.
If a man attempts to accomplish the same thing substituting god as the essence of all things, and travels the globe making such a claim to all people in all lands, no one would have a common reference for this god. They would only have their individual psyches conjuring up distinct images of what a god might be in form and function.
I really don't understand how anyone can make the claim that a single common god exists in the absence of revelation. Yet, logic is always kicked to the curb and people persist to make such a claim.
If only there was a book that explained an objective definition of God so that we wouldn't have to make it up as we go...
If only there was "one" book....
On to the question regarding christianity and god's role in its creation -
Why do you believe in a god? Because you were told to. Why would you believe what you were told? Because you trusted the source. Why would that source believe in a god? Again, trust is the only answer.
And, so it goes into antiquity until we reach the point where god and all such notions revolving around one come into serious question.
The only original written work claiming a god exists is the bible. Notions of the god du jour are sourced to it. Yet, there is no historicity for the biblical content.
No public records can be found recording the bible's key cast of characters whether it be birth/death records, life events, known associations or other evidence they ever existed. They exit only in the bible which is inarguably a story shrouded in plagiarized myth-making with contemporaneous personages of public notoriety mentioned to give it some sense of authenticity. Yet, again, those person's of notoriety who the bible claim to have had a role in its story show no such roles in their own court records, documents and journals of the time.
The Nicene Creed clearly gives us a public record of a meeting of early christian religion architects being told by a pagan emperor how to write their trinity into history, who the jesus person would be from that day forward and what relationship it had with the god being proposed. Edict of an emperor or word of god? The latter by the order of the former. Constantine ordered the bishops to record his version of the trinity as the word of god. That is clearly in the court records of the proceedings that became known as the Nicene Creed, and includes how those early bishops wrote the god/jesus/holy spirit into what ultimately became the bible.
So, the troubling question about why a god would create certain things needn't be troubling at all. It was not the work of a non-existent god but rather the work of a secular ruling dynasty of religiosos preying upon the fragile and simple psyches of the masses for personal gain no differently than confidence men throughout the ages seeking to swindle as they do.