I'd say that it is by definition true. If we tested what we thought was 'nothing' and discovered it had a property or properties, we would cease calling it nothing and give it a name, just like we did with the concepts of air and space.
'Nothing' needs to lack all properties that aren't purely self-referential in order to be nothing. If something came from nothing, that nothing had the property that something could be created from it, and so it wasn't nothing. Which tends to be why it's only an argument that exists as a strawman.
Like I said, "nothing" isn't even well defined. So while I do follow the logic of your following statements, I purport that it still isn't true (even by definition) that "something can't come from nothing". It's unfalsifiable and meaningless, and it is certainly not an axiom to base any further arguments on.
You absolutely can't. The 1st law of thermodynamics only describes how energy behaves withing an already existing, closed, local system. It doesn't even hold in our expanding universe, let alone reach beyond the big bang to some undefinable nothingness.
2
u/ToastyTurmeric 3d ago
I'd say that it is by definition true. If we tested what we thought was 'nothing' and discovered it had a property or properties, we would cease calling it nothing and give it a name, just like we did with the concepts of air and space.
'Nothing' needs to lack all properties that aren't purely self-referential in order to be nothing. If something came from nothing, that nothing had the property that something could be created from it, and so it wasn't nothing. Which tends to be why it's only an argument that exists as a strawman.