I am not a Christian. I do believe in God. But I don't believe God created the world we live in. It doesn't look like the kind of place an all-good person would create. But Christians typically do believe that God created the world. Why?

God is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person. Those are the essential attributes of God (don't be tedious and question that - if you want to use the word 'God' to refer to a peach, that's fine, but you're just a berk).

Possession of those attributes does not entail that one has created anything, much less the world. Indeed, if anything supposing God to have created this world creates problems - really quite big problems - that do not arise if one does not make that assumption.

Being omnipotent involves being all powerful - being able to do anything. But it does not essentially involve actually doing anything. That is, one can be all powerful and not do a thing. A creature who is unable to refrain from doing things is not omnipotent.

Being omniscient does not essentially involve creating anything either. And nor does being omnibenevolent.

So, there is nothing in the definition of God that commits a Christian to the belief that God created the world.

Perhaps it is the bible that commits them to it. I haven't read it, but I did just read the book of Genesis and it does not say there that God created the world. Rather, it is just a description of God creating a place. There seems no reason to think the place in question is here. Indeed, there seems good reason to think it isn't, given the description.

For instance, in the place that God creates in Genesis people live for hundreds and hundreds of years. The average lifespan seems about 800-900 years! It's quite explicit about this. Now, that's not at all like here.

And the place that God creates in Genesis he creates in 6 days. But this place - the world - seems to have evolved slowly.

And events - such as a the flood - are described that do not seem to have occurred here (indeed, that do not seem capable of occurring here - the flood described in Genesis submerges everything, for instance....is there even enough water in the world to do that?). And an ark is created that can contain pairs of every type of animal, which does not seem logistically possible if it applies to all the variety of creatures that exist here.

And though places are mentioned in the Genesis account that correspond to names that we have given to places here in the world, the book of Genesis seems to have been written before those places had those names. Take Egypt, Egypt is mentioned. But it is first mentioned as the name of a person - Egypt. And so Egypt is simply that person's land. There is no reason to think that Genesis is referring to place we call Egypt. Indeed, Egypt was not called Egypt at the time (Genesis was supposedly written in the 6th century BC, but Egypt acquired that name much later. That applies to other places too it seems. The Euphrates is mentioned. But the river that we call the Euphrates was not called that when Genesis was written. And so on.

So, there is nothing in Genesis to suggest that it is an account of how all things that have come into being have come into being. It is just an account of how God made a place. And there is no reason to think the place being talked about is here, and positive reason to think it is not.

Seems to me, then, that Christians are missing a trick: they are trying to square the genesis account of God's creation of a place with what we understand about how this place - the world - has come to be. But the Genesis account does not seem to be about this place at all.

But perhaps I am wrong and there are passages in the bible that really do commit the Christian to believing that God created this place. So much the worse for the credibility of Christianity if that is true....but I wonder if it is true?