ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.

Did our universe come from nothing, as some physicists have proposed?

Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermid.

Well, today's episode critiques the audacious claim that our universe popped into existence

out of nothing. What is nothing? What isn't nothing? We'll unpack all that in due course.

This episode is actually built around a suggestion I recently received from an ID the Future listener.

Timothy, tuning in from South Australia, emailed me recently.

Here's what he wrote.

I've heard over the years that the universe was somehow created from nothing.

I recently learned about something called quantum vacuum,

and from my quick scan online, it's supposedly capable of pulling energy from nothing,

or from other locations or something.

Where did the theory that the universe was created from nothing originate from?

How old is the idea?

Why is the idea seem more acceptable to materialists, physicalists, and atheists, scientists, and philosophers

compared to the idea that an intelligent designer was behind the creation of the universe?

Why is the thought of an intelligent designer being responsible for the universe's creation, seen as magical, and yet everything that exists being created from nothing is not seen in the same way?

Because to me, it seems even more magical and mysterious, incomprehensible even, that nothing is not seen in the same way. Because to me, it seems even more magical and mysterious,

incomprehensible even,

that nothing has any creative causal powers whatsoever

to make anything at all.

Whereas, at least proposing an intelligent designer,

...