Humanizing God

Problem

It is a mistake to think that nature and the universe work like humans do. Some people think that for nature to create something new, it would need to think, design, and construct something from small pieces. That is how a human would do it.

They believe that God is like a really really big human, working in the ways that humans work, and therefor putting all of nature together the way a human would.

That is the source of their error. Nature, and the universe, and God do not work like humans. God does not sit down, make a blueprint of the final form, and then constructing pieces that are put together for the final product. Instead God uses a technique that is far bigger, far smarter, and far more glorious than they can imagine: a universe that creates itself.

They say things like:

Our Universe did not create and design itself.

They think God is not powerful enough to make a self-creating universe. We see self-creating things all around us. That is how nature works -- not like a man, but instead a system and finds answers on its own.

They think God created the universe like a man would. That is their mistake. God is far more powerful than that.

Nowhere

While humanizing God, people think of God existing "somewhere" for a long long time, and then deciding to create the universe "over there". That is, God existed in some kind of space, and then placed a new universe in a position that he could be outside of it.

But the question would then have to be: who created the space that God resides in? Theist try to avoid the question by simply saying that it existed forever, but that is not a good answer. If the space that God is in exists separate from God, then why would we need God?

You have to try to imagine that there is really no space and no time, but God begins as a kind of spark. The tiniest of things, but out of that grows space and time.

God's Will

Spinoza explains that God does not have free will in the way we normally think of it. God thinks all possible thoughts all at the same time, and simply does whatever (and everything) that is possible. God could not decide to create the universe because God could not NOT create the universe. As soon as it was possible to create the universe, it would be created, because God does everything that is possible. Without thinking about it, because there is no reason to think when every possible thought is already present.

it is thinking that God is like a human that confuses most discussions of the beginning of the universe.