Question for Atheists

[The Reality Salesman01]

So then you cannot be a believer in the Christian God without special pleading. Either God acted upon himself and brought about the universe, or there existed a third substance. If God acted upon himself to bring about change in the form of The Universe as we know it, you are a Theist arguing for the existence of a God that is subject to change and therein, subject to pre-existing physical processes. The other version is that God sacrificed his own being for the existence of the universe, and you are a theist arguing for a position that was only correct before the existence of the universe, but is now wrong due to the existence of the universe that now exists in His place. If you conclude that God acted upon a separate "object" then you have only succeeded in moving the goal post and continue bearing your burden of proof. I suspect that's the route you will choose. But I'll let you answer...