I was thinking about...
The belief that there was once absolutely nothing. And that nothing happened to that nothing for an eternity
Which again suggests that nothing is a kind of something, that has duration in this case. That's probably an error.
A better way to think about it is how some people explain the Big Bang. Space/time extends from now into the past for a finite temporal distance. What lies beyond the Big Bang? According to some,
there isn't any beyond the Big Bang, since that's where time (and space) start. It's kind of a limit concept, 'This far and no farther'.
until the nothing magically exploded (for no reason), creating time, everything, and everywhere.
Something from nothing theorists try to use quantum field theory to account for that. Which assumes the principles of quantum field theory. So in a way it's just another species of ancient Platonism, seeking to spin the world of experience (in this case our space-time-matter universe) out of a higher, abstract and non-physical realm that mere mortals can't sense but physicists (the Philosopher-Kings) can penetrate with chalkboards full of mathematical hieroglyphs.
Then a bunch of the exploded everything magically rearranged itself into highly organized molecular elements (again, for no reason whatsoever),
I'm starting to think that those who make that kind of "for no reason" criticism are mourning the loss of the idea that life is a story, a narrative. A story in which everything fits and everything has its place, role and function. The idea that time
has a plot and that like characters in a novel, all of the events of our lives happen so as to advance the plot. God's great Plan for creation or whatever it is. Progress. Without it, things threaten to just become one damn thing after another.
