This is in response to a question seen at "Yahoo Answers," posed as:
Though I am a Pandeist and not an Atheist, I proffered an answer, and I expand on this further here:
A building has builders because it is essentially defined as a thing built by builders. If you came across a cave in the wilderness, would you call it a "building"? Even if it was roomy enough for people to live in, or even to set up a commercial office in? Surely not, for it would not be a thing which was built.
Now, have you ever heard anyone refer to our Universe, or our Milky Way Galaxy, or our Solar System, or our planet Earth, as "a building"? Surely not, and so we know know that these things were not "built," or they'd be called "buildings."
But here's another thing, when you do see a building of any substantial size or scale, do you think to yourself that that building must have had a single "builder" acting autonomously? Or is it not the case in your own experience that *every* building beyond a rudimentary hut or the like must have *multiple* builders, working cooperatively? And perhaps many more people than you think, for it takes many men to manufacture materials used for even the simplest constructions -- loggers, smelters, machiners, mechanics, material scientists, glaziers, all manner of factory workers -- and it takes many construction workers wielding all many of tools (and separate still many makers of tools), and not only an architect but most likely a separate landscaper for the exterior and a separate interior designer for the interior, and everything else from food truck people to lawyers and accountants to make sure all the permits get filed and the taxes get paid. And the bigger and more complex the structure, the larger the number of people involved in the creation of it.
So if we are to assume from the building/builder(s) model that our Universe was god-built on some wholesale scale (ie built as a whole instead of being set forth pandeistically), it follows then that there must have been hundreds of trillions of gods involved in the process, boss gods and worker gods, some of these gods capable of directing the action but not designing or building the end product, some gods incapable of managing or constructing the project but ably tasked with designing some aspect of it or other, some gods not able to manage or design but able to carry out construction orders. Plus all their toolmakers and materials suppliers and lawyer gods and accountant gods to make sure all the divine permits get filed and the sacred taxes get paid.
