I too had heard of this early Gnostic belief, basically that God had created the world, realised his mistake and been trying to disown responsibility ever since. On exploring modern Gnosticism I discovered many other versions.
In many ways, the concept of a God that would intervene in individual, mundane affairs for the sake those who pray is a modern concept in Christianity. Old Christianity was built on God Time, not questioning the Divine Mystery of why the world is how it is and even being blissful and thankful for experiencing life. The only rewards that you would receive were in the afterlife.
I guess it was competition with science in the Age of Enlightenment that changed all that. This is really when Christianity seems to have fragmented into being what ever you want it to mean and following society's subjective demands rather than objective theology.
An example was the complaints on the death of JPII for not conforming to societal beliefs about promiscuity and homosexuality, thus blaming him for the spread of AIDS. They wanted God's word and standards to be changed because they did not like what God said. Of course, it did not enter their minds that following the no sex before marriage and no sex outside marriage would have had quite a significant impact on HIV.
This is why the Catholic Church did not want the Bible translated but to remain in the hands of those that were theologically trained. Every part of the Bible must be seen in its overall context rather than taking one bit and leaving another. Single quotations are taken completely out of context and distorted.
This is what we see in the modern world of Christianity. The Vatican actually believes in Evolutionary Theory! It does not intrude into the realm of science. All of the conflict is with those who start up their own little Churches without adequate academic theological training.
The worst case I have heard of this is a female friend whose Christian boyfriend tried to convince her that whilst vaginal sex before marriage was a terrible sin, anal sex was okay according to the Bible.
I have lived in Mexico and there Catholicism is further from Western Catholicism than you would imagine. It has less to do with Western Catholicism than official Chuch of England and other mainstream European derived and controlled Protestant Faiths. They can pray to St Simon, a Guatemalan black magician for curses on theeir enemies. They can pray to St Death, who seems to have roots in African voodoo, then stick needles into the genitals of a doll of their spouse to keep them faithful. There are entire churches dedicated to its worship. And there are supposedly Catholic Churches where they openly perform animal sacrifice.
Christianity is out of control. It bears little or no resemblance to what it was. There were a lot of things right about Christianity but most of them have been lost in many allegedly Christian beliefs. Instead, it has become democratically controlled by the lowest common denominator of society for the sake of societal power so that everybody can believe what they want to believe. Society believes in egoism and many Christians believe that God should be their obedient pet or forgiving servant so long as they go to church on Sunday.
The original Christian concept of God is evil by modern 'Christian' standards of expectation. Perhaps that is why the Book of Revelations says that God is coming for them, and not in a good way. It says that Christians are first on the list for His fireballs.