Is the universe God?

[Alex K]

When I talk about the universe, I'm refering to any material thing that ever existed. Now try to wrap your brain around this. I think that we can all agree that either the universe always existed or it came into being at some time from the nothing that was already there.

Far from. What do you mean by "come into being" when there is no preexisting Universe in which a temporal process can take place?
The problem here is also, when you say the Universe has a beginning, you talk about time as measured by the timeline within the universe. This does not allow you to draw conclusions about the origin of the universe or time itself.