I was talking about the universe’s evolution and complexification, not so much about its origin. The earlier stages of the universe bring into being the later ones. Nebulas create stars, stars create solar systems, the cooling planets create the ingredients of life which form simple organisms over a long period of time, and those organisms evolve into more complex ones. The subject of natural creativity is the earlier stages of the universe’s self-development.

The creation of the universe as a whole is another matter. It’s hard to see how the origin of nature could itself be natural, since something is natural in so far as it’s scientifically explained, and science explains by positing simpler causes, conditions, or regularities which would themselves have to be explained in natural terms. I have an article coming out soon on the reasons for this endlessness of scientific explanations.

But the unnaturalness of the universe’s creation is precisely why I say nature’s creativity is monstrous and comparable specifically to a zombie’s simulation of life. A zombie stumbles around and seems alive but there’s no one home in it. Likewise, all kinds of things are naturally created within the universe, but there’s no one home directing the natural constructions. The universe may just pop into being for no reason, just as a corpse decides to return to pseudo-life as a zombie, with no earthly cause. Both are monstrous only in so far as they’re unnatural events with no comforting, anthropocentric explanation. Once you say God created the zombies, they lose their power as monsters. The horror comes from the unknown: monsters are horrific when there’s no good reason for their hideousness.

I should add that if you’re going to appeal to the ordinary sense of “create,” the theistic explanation of the universe’s origin isn’t “obviously” superior to mine. You’d be appealing to a divine mind that’s eternal and uncreated, which is an incoherent notion. Ordinary creativity in the anthropocentric sense has nothing to do with miraculous “creation” by an uncreated mind that isn’t anything like a human person. Ordinary human creators are themselves products of their parents. God isn’t an ordinary mind, so the ordinary sense of “create” wouldn’t apply to his “creation” of the universe from nothing.