system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I have a philosophy/religion question..If "God" is Omnipotent and Omniscient, why did he create the universe? Was he bored or something?
gpt
I think the leading modern protestant Christian philosophical view on this question is best framed by Alvin Plantinga.

Plantinga is perhaps best known for his "free will defense", a response to the classic problem of evil.  The problem of evil asks a somewhat related question -- why would an omnipotent / omniscient / benevolent God create or allow evil.  Plantinga's response (see his book God, Freedom, and Evil (1974)) is that "the price for creating a world in which (persons) produce moral good is creating one in which they also produce moral evil."  

Perhaps more clearly stated in an earlier version of his argument in 1965, "it is possible that God, even being omnibenevolent, would desire to create a world which contains evil if moral goodness requires free moral creatures."

Now look at the logic of this argument at a more basic level, ignoring the existence of evil.  Plantinga is arguing that the good moral acts of created persons have positive moral value, and that God's omnibenevolence involves something approximating the maximization of universal moral good.  This implies that the reason for God creating ANYTHING is because God could forsee that doing so was the best possible action he could take to maximize universal moral good.

Now this runs into evidencial troubles when you consider "natural evil", like famines that cause children to starve, among other potential difficulties with the argument.  But of course it should be unsurprising that arguments on the border between theology and philosophy are controversial to say the least, and Plantinga is unusually well regarded for a modern religious philosopher, so I'll take his view as a pretty good example.