Something and nothing.

 Can “Something Come From Nothing?”

First you must have definitions for “something” and “nothing,” and also “cause,” because you cannot answer the question without knowing what they are.

If the word “something” pertains to ‘presently existing spatial entities,’ then the word “nothing” is its antithesis, a ‘non-temporal non-spatial non-entity.’

while the word “cause,’ in the most general sense, refers to ‘a necessary relation between entities in which the latter follows necessarily from (i.e. is caused by) the former’

the answer is simple, and it lies in a category of being that was not introduced in the definitions, that of ‘potentiality;’ that is to say that something cannot be caused by nothing because the difference between something and nothing is that something possesses the potential to become over time, but nothing does not (in the absolute sense), and this is because becoming necessitates duration, but nothing is non-temporal.

it necessarily follows that something, in the spatial and temporal sense, cannot come from nothing, in the non-temporal sense.

this means that something must come from something, that is, something which has the potential to become something which is non-identical to itself (in some respect). however, it need not be the case that that something be spatial in the sense of having spatially extended dimensions, but may be non-spatial in the sense that it is a non-dimensional point which has position rather than spatial extension.

the question then becomes what is both durational and non-spatial, has the potential to become contained within itself, and exists eternally? these are the properties of the only externally existing entity.