One of the Gnostic sects that developed from Taoism suggested that our world was created by some lesser spirits (perhaps angels) because they saw God having so much fun doing it. Because they were not as powerful as God they ended up messing up a whole bunch of things, causing God to have pity on us and sending Jesus to provide us with a gateway out of this flawed reality to the real universe God created.
On a different note, everything I've heard about "Of Pandas And People" suggests it is an excellent textbook. Since it gives such great examples of almost every fallacy of argumentation it makes an excellent primer for Logic courses.