Is the universe God?

[Lek]

Okay, so first of all, "created or always existed" is a false dichotomy, since it fails to take into account all other possibilities, like "arose naturally over time." Just off the top of my head.

Arising naturally over time from what? Something, whatever it is, had to always exist or it came into being at some time. I did state that one of the possibilities was that the universe always existed. Or maybe what the universe came from something that always existed. But science can't answer that question.

Second of all, adding "something non material" as a possibility, then you haven't justified that at all, nor even eliminated the other prong (eternal) of your original false dichotomy, means you're now attempting to force new components of your argument in with no rationale at all. You're trying to cash checks that your argument hasn't even attempted to write, yet.

Like I said, I didn't try to rule out the possibility of the universe always existing. What I said was that the material universe always existed or it created itself from nothing. I guess it could have been created from something else, but something had to be first.

Third, you can't get from "something immaterial," to "christian god," no matter how had you try. As has been rightly pointed out to you, you can't just define your god into existence by stripping everything meaningful away from the concept in order to get us to accept it, and then slipping all the religious stuff under the door once you've gotten people to say yes.

What I said was that if the universe that created itself, it shares a characteristic with the christian God.

You're trying to turn your religion into the fine print on the deistic god you want everyone to accept. It's not going to work.

I wasn't trying to do that. I was trying to open people up to the very real possibilty that God could exist and that scientific discovery isn't the only path to knowing that.