I find this central statement of yours to add nothing to our understanding, or even to convey an idea to the mind. It doesn't mean anything to say that space and time are "just emergent properties". Similar statements have been made to explain consciousness as just an "epiphenomenon of matter", an equally meaningless statement. I might as well say that reality is ... we'll it just is. The object of thinking is meaning, and these assertions don't mean anything. Similarly, what can be understood by the statement that "nature itself can act". This does explain anything.

It's whatever it is that we are trying to describe with the phrase "like gravity" that made it possible for the universe to start itself. The ontological commitment isn't to the human definition, but to that which the human definition points toward.

I describe gravity as having a phi = -m/r attractive potential for a point-like massive object. But what if it is actually m/r^{1 + epsilon}? What if the force of gravity isn't inverse-square, but something slightly different? Does that mean I was referring to the wrong law all along? I don't think so. Even if my description has errors, the behavior I'm pointing to is something real.

What Hawking is pointing toward is even more vague. It's not gravity. It's something that looks like gravity in the right lighting.

Joining the definition with the thesis we get "Because there is a human definition of the way things go, gravity-wise, the universe creates itself." How does the human definition cause the universe to create Itself? I think he must have intended a word other than "because," but I can't think what that word would be.

Could the Universe have "caused Itself" had It done so without causing things to go the way they do, gravity-wise? and if so, what constrains It in that way?

However, it seems to me that the well-known atemporality of the Big Bang singularity is an argument against a per accidens cause of the universe, but not really against the Catholic God, Who is the per se cause of the universe. (This goes to Ye Olde Statistician's point about logical priority instead of temporal priority).

But as a counterargument to the Kalam Cosmological argument as deployed by, e.g., W.L. Craig, which I think does imply a per accidens cause of the universe, this article is very, very good.

I very much like the way you put (2). It's a good objection to the Kalam argument; and with your permission I'd like to use it.

Personally, I think Moonbob might in fact exist. I find great kinship in Spinoza's philosophy. Spinoza thought that God was a self-caused single substance of which we are all part. There is only one substance and we're all a part of it.

Maybe the Moonbob is really a thing. In fact, maybe it's the only thing. If you get what I mean.

Most people who use Kalam probably don't believe in the Moonbob, so your objection is apt. Probably a more effective objection than the one in my article.

that the universe caused itself... it's possible

1. In order for X to cause anything, X must first of all exist. Something that does not exist can't do anything. That is, "X caused X" assumes a priori the existence of X, making the proposition a case of circular reasoning.

2. A "universe" is not a thing, but a collection of things, and exists iff at least one its elements exists. We don't ask what caused the Moonbob, let alone whether it caused itself, because we don't regard the Moonbob as a thing. (This is the flaw in the kalam argument.)
3. It is easy to see how matter simultaneously creates space [and time] the way action simultaneously creates reaction. It's not so easy to understand how space creates matter. Not without a whole lot of magic poofing.
4. It's much easier to imagine an empty box into which things poof than it is to justify it through the field equations. Not without a few epicycles.