Can something come from nothing

[pocaracas]

how can something come from nothing? 

There are many ways.... and none....
There are the known ways, the unknown ways.... the known unknown ways and the unknown unknown ways.

if it happens once, it can happen again.

I'd say that's a fair assessment...

[Mister Agenda]

Hmm. Philosophical absolute nothingness has no properties at all. 'Unable to have something come from it' is a property. There doesn't seem to be a contradiction in the idea of something coming from nothing.

My response to 'why is there something instead of just nothing?' is 'why wouldn't there be?'

[Cyberman]

Notice the change of direction in tone here. We went from "can something come from nothing" to "how can something come from nothing" without stopping for breath. The first question is valid, while the second smuggles in a strawman that we're supposed to defend.

To address both questions in order:

Maybe.

No idea.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The philosophical question goes back a very long way, doesn't it? I'm not sure where the OP is going with this, but as one Christian apologist to a presumably other one, IF your intention is to justify a creator god based on the idea of a temporal beginning, ex nihilo, THEN your efforts are seriously misguided. The question at hand is not the initiation of the physical universe; but rather it's sustenance. The background premise is that within the physical universe things that now exist could possibly cease to exist. The traditional phrase summarizing the idea is "creation is a constant coming into being." Without a Necessary Being (one that could not possibly cease to be), the argument goes, all of being could collapse into nothing. The complete demonstration is more subtle than that and was fully developed by Aquinas in Question 2 of the Summa Theological. You might want to check it out. Also you will find that the most common objection to the argument relies on the notion of "brute facts" so you should prepare yourself with an understanding of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

[Thumpalumpacus]

how can something come from nothing? 

if it happens once, it can happen again.

What makes you think it happened once?

[brewer]

Obviously it won't happen in this thread.

[Amarok]

The question is interesting one consider

1. Does nothing even exist. can it even exist

2.Often when nothing is discussed within the universe context there not talking about on existent nothing. There talking about the fact that there wasn't anything that caused the universe . And no the law causality is a law WITHIN the universe. Same goes the stupid question why doesn't x come from nothing to?.

3. Furthermore the idea something cannot comes from nothing can be a logical idea .But if nothing exists then tell me again what's enforcing the rule something cannot come from nothing. Or the idea that potential is needed to create something .

4. We have never seen nothing so remind me again how we have determined what it can do if it existed as a state ?

[FatAndFaithless]

A couple things that have already been noted in this thread, but are important..

1) How do you define 'nothing'?
2) Who is saying something came from nothing?

[Mister Agenda]

It occurs to me that nothingness...no matter, no energy, no space, no time...might not 'be able' to 'exist'. How could something without time exist for any amount of time? If you allow it to have time, then it necessarily also has space, and then you've got some kind of universe. I think absolute nothingness may be a self-contradictory concept.

[ignoramus]

A negative particle and its positive equivalent will cancel out to nothing. ( with some possible energy release).
The reverse is also possible. Maybe the universe can borrow energy in advance to create itself from nothing.
Weirder things are possible, right, theists?