RVCA

As a "non-believer", I'm free to accept any truth assertion about nature that can be reasonably argued for. I don't believe that cups, chairs, or people can pop into existence from nothing. And indeed no evidence supports that claim. But once we look closer at the objects deeper into their structure, we see their micro components--the components all things we see are made of. These are the atoms of course. And the sort of world atoms inhabit is quite different than the one we live in. One mindboggling fact about them is that they are nearly pure empty space, but yet once they're bunched up together they can become hard, tangible objects (and liquid and gas). Looking even more closely, we see that an atom's nucleus is surrounded by a cloud of electrons (and these are virtually massless!). At this level, the weirdness of reality is truly apparent. No use of common sense could help us imagine what nature at bottom would look like. It takes complex technology, astute observation, and scientific creativity and imagination to try to come to an understanding of how to make sense of all this. Going even more deeply now, we see that electrons themselves are made up of even smaller particles. We've now entered the domain of hardcore quantum mechanics. Here, you must leave your common sense at the door. It will not help you. Quantum physics represents the furthest humans have gone in understanding the most fundamental aspects of nature. As of now, humanity does not yet have a satisfactory explanation for the observations of these quantum particles we are able to detect. We can see how they behave. We can see how they interact. But we don't understand the underlying cause, yet. In experiments these quantum particles DO pop into and out of existence. We SEE it happening. We're trying to understand the mechanisms that govern this strange behavior, but it is very hard and difficult.

And now I'm brought back to your initial claim that I believe things can come from nothing. As I have tried to illustrate (hopefully well enough), our universe, in it's most basic parts, is very, very weird and mysterious. It's crucial to appreciate this when thinking about what sort of thing the origin of the universe would be like. As of now, it's origin is thought to be some kind of crazy quantum event in which, yes, out of nothing something arises. BUT, it's based on observation and everything else we know about how the universe at bottom works. Trusting the method of science is the most intellectually honest stance to take. Accrediting things to god is the same thing as cheating yourself, and the rest of us, of knowledge.