I am new to the forum so excuse my nativity on the broader topic of philosophy, so take my post as merely a random commentary from a random researcher.

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When we ask, did the universe come from nothing?, I have to wonder if we aren't confusing words. Precisely, nothing cannot be positively defined, for otherwise it would be something. The "nothing" is the primal Being, the darkness surrounding the light. — darthbarracuda

I must agree that nothing is not a good word to capture the general idea of the before, but I also perhaps think that it can be interpret in a different measure to make sense within the context of 'nothing lacking nothing,' and "nothing not having something'.

In a sense, the fundamental foundations of our been is by the measurable accounts and progress of the parameters of the Universe in which we live in; those being time, and the dimensions in which we visualize and think inside of. The nothingness that we have the intuition for is a measurable (or in better words, a lack of measure) that we interpret due to the fact we are founded in the after (in something).

In other words, while it might make intuitive sense to our person that something must have followed something, that is only due to mere fact we are in something, and thus think restrictively in something. To put it in a different manner, logically assuming math is a fundamental parameter of the after, then the existence of nothing can be interpret in the existence of something; in the function x + 2 = 3, the lack of existence of the solution -5 implies that there is a nothing to something, but that nothing also implies that there was something so it could be nothing. So in a sense, the implication of something and nothing is a loop in the fundamental logic used in the after. Thus, I believe, this logical loop cannot be assertively answered in the after.

What we can do, however, is interpret things with a different postulation. The function of f(x) = 0 is, in essence, the existence of purely nothing -- without implication of something. That is, this nothing does not imply a something, and of course the lack of something (nothing) cannot imply the nothing (nothing lacks nothing, and nothing not having something). Our range of interpretation in the after, however, stops here -- and I believe, this is what the word 'nothing' implies in the context of the before, not in the context of the paragraph above, as there having something in the nothing.

Now of course this leads down to the question of how absolute zero, nothing, can become something... and that you have millions of creative solutions to the problem. My point is that something cannot prove the existence of something coming from nothing. Whatever is and happened in the before is naturally out of our intuitive ability to understand.