Why would a God create the universe?

This question is intriguing for people of all kinds of beliefs. If you identify with a one-divine-creator religion such as Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, it is important to have an answer as to why your God would create humans and the universe we inhabit. Otherwise, what purpose would you have for practicing a religion?

For those who find themselves more along the lines of atheism, it’s even more important to have a reason why no Supreme Moral Being would have possibly created our world. After all, if you are willing to risk spending an eternal afterlife in the foretold agony of the infamous H-E-double-hockey sticks, you oughta be pretty confident the afterlife isn’t real. 

Everybody gets so hung up fighting about religion nowadays. On the one hand, you have some religious folk somehow using Jesus as an excuse to be blank-a-phobic. On the other hand, you have anti-religious folk writing off anything religious as some evil far-right propaganda scheme aimed at taking away the rights of LBGTQIA+ people and women. 

Then there are all the folks in the middle – the people simply exploring varied means to find the meaning of life, love and contentment.

So then…what IS the purpose of human life? What does our existence mean?

Let’s assume for the remainder of this article that some kind of Divine Creator DOES exist… 

1) Why did they create the universe the way it is? It seems pretty overcomplicated, imho (in my human opinion).

2) Why on earth would a Supreme Being need to create humans? What business does an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent Being have in creating creatures that could die from eating peanut butter?

Many people believe in the existence of God simply because the universe is too intricate to have randomly spawned. To me, questions like these pose an interesting counterargument…that our universe is too weird to have been created by any rational being.

Although this article is more exploratory than explanatory, as I am a mere 19-year-old human that will not pretend to know the answers to human existence, I have identified a few potential explanations for why anyone would create humanity. 

#1 — God was lonely. Imagine being the only entity that exists in a universe of nothingness! Gross. Maybe God wanted companions to share his land of eternal happiness with, so he created the Earth to be a place where humans proved whether or not they were decent enough people to be God’s friends. Our existence is a competition!

#2 — God was bored. This theory would certainly explain the randomness of our universe…why life is so complicated, and why humans around the world are so vastly and intricately different. Perhaps there is no afterlife at all, and God just creates random people to watch them out of curiosity. Our existence is entertainment!

#3 — God wanted something to love. If God is omnibenevolent – aka, loving – like many religions believe him to be, perhaps those religions are right in thinking God created humanity so he could have an outlet for his boundless love.

If that is true, any person who is loving will likely remain in God’s good graces and get into the Good Place at the end of their earthly visit. Perhaps our existence is that simple – God just wants to love us and see us love the other people he has created. Our existence is cherished!

#4 — God ain’t real. Nope, it just doesn’t make any sense that the same God who created a universe with billions upon billions of galaxies with the potential for infinite realities also created the Kardashian-Jenner clan. Our existence is random!

I acknowledge there are likely thousands of other scenarios I am not wise enough to have considered. Still, even in my oversimplified list I notice one running theme…in no scenario does it make rational sense that humans were created to be ignorant assholes that treat each other like garbage. So there is that.

Though I can’t leave you with an answer, I can leave you with advice. Do your best to love other people – If not for the sake of being a good person, do it just in case it turns out to be the entire purpose of human existence.