If there had ever been (absolutely) nothing, could there be something now?
Again Bill S there is a huge problem with that question.
1.) You could try to answer that from your experience.
The problem is we live and have experience in one tiny part of a very big universe that may actually be nothing like what we see around us. As humans we once believed the earth was flat, we were the centre of the universe, the sun revolved around the earth by using exactly that sort of reasoning.
Do you really want to go back to the dark ages?
2.) You could try answering the question from the point of view of physics. I know you asked this on a number of science forums and they gave you the same answer I will.
Our current understanding and mathematics of physics does not exclude the possibility that you can create something from nothing, regardless of the fact that probably every scientist hates the idea.
3.) You could try answering the question from what you personally prefer as a cult (although that has really negative context and I don't mean to imply it, my english I can't find a better wording)
Pokey's answer: "I would not think so. What would anything form from?" is concise, reasonable and lacking in extraneous maths. It also anticipates the question that would naturally follow an affirmative answer.
This goes down that path and science caress little what Pokey, you me or anybody else "thinks" that is the basis for a cult not science.
I accept willingly that mathematics is the best language that humans have yet found to probe the mysteries of the cosmos, but I don't necessarily accept that there is some grand mathematical model on which some preexisting intelligence designed the cosmos, and that we cannot even think about the nature of existence unless we discover the mind of some mathematical God.
Again science does not care what you think. All it cares about is do you have an idea that makes predictions that can be tested and are those answers verified.
