Quantum mechanics shows particles pop into existence from nothing all the time, so the universe could have come from nothing too, without a cause.

Why people find it persuasive

Popular science writing does describe 'virtual particles' as appearing and disappearing, and if physics already shows uncaused events at the smallest scale, it seems to undercut the premise that everything that begins to exist needs a cause.

Important distinctions

• • Physical 'nothing' (a quantum vacuum with defined properties, energy, and governing laws) vs. philosophical/metaphysical 'nothing' (the complete absence of anything at all).
• • Uncaused in the sense of not deterministically predictable vs. uncaused in the sense of arising from and unconstrained by any prior physical field, law, or state.
• • Virtual particle fluctuations within an existing quantum field vs. the absolute origination of the field, spacetime, and laws themselves.
• • Indeterministic causation vs. no causation at all.

Christian response

• • Point out precisely what a quantum vacuum is: it is a physical state with definite structure, described by quantum field theory, obeying specific physical laws, possessing measurable energy and defined field properties — it is emphatically not 'nothing' in the philosophical sense used in the cosmological argument (the utter absence of anything whatsoever, including space, time, laws, and potentiality). Physicists like Lawrence Krauss have been criticized by other physicists and philosophers (including atheist philosopher David Albert, in a well-known critical review) precisely for using 'nothing' to mean 'a quantum vacuum,' which is a substantive physical something.
• • Distinguish indeterminism from lack of causation: even granting that some quantum events are not deterministically predictable from prior states (a genuinely debated interpretive question in physics, since deterministic interpretations like Bohmian mechanics remain live options), 'not deterministically predictable' is not the same as 'uncaused' — virtual particles arise from and are constrained by the pre-existing quantum vacuum and its governing field equations, which is a causal/dependency relationship, just not one that fully determines the specific outcome in advance.
• • Point out that the relevant premise in cosmological arguments (that whatever begins to exist has a cause) is typically about beginning to exist from a state of true non-being, not about probabilistic transitions between two already-existing physical states (empty vacuum to particle-populated vacuum) governed by a law that itself already exists; the universe's beginning, by contrast, is the origin of the very existence of space, time, matter, and physical law themselves, with no prior 'quantum vacuum' or law available to operate before that.
• • Note that using quantum indeterminacy at the origin of the universe as a whole requires already assuming there was a pre-existing quantum field or law-governed substrate for the universe to fluctuate out of, which simply pushes the 'where did this law-governed field ultimately come from' question back a step rather than eliminating it.

Christian counterresponse

These are taken seriously by philosophers of religion (including William Lane Craig, who has written specifically on the Hartle-Hawking model), but even proponents note such models still involve a defined mathematical/physical structure (imaginary time, quantum gravitational laws) that is not equivalent to true metaphysical nothingness, and the models remain speculative, mathematically technical, and unconfirmed rather than established physics, so it is premature to treat them as having settled the question either way.