I love the idea of the lost city of Atlantis because it fits so well into an alternate theory of human origins. In the alternate theory, the first life on Earth was an alien settlement. The aliens built a scientific base station in Atlantis and used their advanced technology to create all the other life forms. Imagine it was illegal to do DNA experiments on their home planet, so they came to Earth and built dinosaurs and pandas and different humanoids and plants just to see what happened.
Perhaps they were looking for the ultimate physical form so their own future generations could survive in hostile climates. Maybe some of the dinosaurs, such as the t-rexes, were highly intelligent. They didn’t use tools because they had no need for them. When they got hungry, they just ate smaller, slower dinosaurs and pooped them out in the forest later. It would be the perfect life.
Or maybe they built different creatures just for the purposes of competition. They would pit one type of creature against another and see who won. The rest of the plants and animals were just food for the gladiator animals and experiments that didn’t work out.
The Atlantis hypothesis explains the big jumps in evolution, and why creatures seem to have common parts, such as birds and dinosaurs. The aliens reused the designs they liked. Maybe some features, such as the exact shape of antlers, were more accidental than planned, because DNA manipulation was as much art as science.
Then something happened to the city of Atlantis. Either it was destroyed in a natural disaster or abandoned on purpose. Now it’s at the bottom of the ocean someplace.
This doesn’t answer the question of who created the aliens in the first place, so it allows the possibility of God. It just pushes him back one level. I like the Atlantis hypothesis because it makes everyone uncomfortable, explains everything here on Earth, and you can’t disprove it. That’s as good as it gets.
I’m sure someone wrote a science fiction book on this exact topic, but I didn’t read it.