Why are we here?

Okay, I'll grant you that's the most basic question in any philosophy. But I mean it more specifically. Why would god create us? What's in it for him? And does this point out a basic flaw in the creation story?

Here's the Christian version. God creates everything, divides the light from the dark, yadda yadda yadda...people. God plops mankind (all two of them) into a paradise on earth. He obviously intends us to be happy. Then there's the talking snake and the fruit salad, etc. but that's all superfluous to this discussion.

We are created to live joyful lives. What does god get out of this? The joy of knowing he has given life and happiness to another entity? I don't think so. If god simply wanted us to live and be happy he could have set up the system to allow that. There was no need for him to put the tree of knowledge in the garden. We didn't need to know good from evil. We could have been happy for eternity in blissful ignorance. No, god must have had something else in mind.

Christian dogma teaches that god created man to love him. This is why the tree was placed in the garden. Man, given free will, had to choose to love god. It had to be love freely given. God could have created creatures hardwired to love him. Essentially programmed...INPUT: sight of god...OUTPUT: love and praise for him. But is that real love?

Okay. He didn't create us for our sake. We wouldn't have noticed if we had never been created. He created us purely for his own sake. It's almost like a lonely little kid who creates imaginary friends to keep him company. The kid is lacking love, or companionship, or self-esteem. He or she is lacking something, and the imaginary friend helps fill the void.

Here's the issue there. God has no voids. God is perfect. That means he lacks nothing. So why does he need us to love him? He has no needs that require fulfilling. He can't be lonely. He contains and is all that he could possibly need. Really, that's a semantic foible. He can't even experience need. God is all-powerful. Need implies weakness. It says that the entity must rely on some outside influence to satisfy itself. It cannot self-satisfy. And as an all-powerful entity, "cannot" is not in god's vocabulary.

But let's pretend for a moment that god could exist with the above-stated flaw. He still doesn't need us. God already had a group of entities to praise and worship him. Angels. He created them before us (one can reasonably assume it was before the period covered by the creation story since the angels are never mentioned.) The difference between angels and humans is supposedly free will. Angels a programmed to love god, while we can choose not to. But what about Satan and the other fallen angels? Either god made them rebel and cease worshipping him (in which case he is directly responsible for evil in the world) or they chose to rebel...free will. I think the case for free will is stronger. In which case god doesn't require us to fulfill his desire for adoration. But this is ultimately a moot point. God couldn't exist with the flaws of need or desire.

So what are we left with? God didn't create us for our sake and he couldn't have created us for his sake. I'll leave the conclusions to you.