I use "nothing" to mean "nothing".
So, you want to use a juvenile / layman defintion of a word in a context where it actually has very narrow and specified scope?
"There is
nothing in this box". That's a correct layman use of the word.
However, to a physicist, that simply is a wrong statement. There's LOADS of stuff in the box:
- plenty of atoms / molecules that make up the "air" in the box
- even if it is a vaccuum inside the box, there's still loads of (virtual) particles in there.
- there's space-time in the box
- there's energy in the box.
There's PLENTY of stuff in the box, and there's PLENTY of stuff
going on in there as well.
A juvenile / layman / superficial approach to this subject, is only going to end up in confusion and failure.
Logically time cannot have existed forever in the past and so changing energy could not have existed.
Whenever there was a universe (with energy), there was time though. And vice versa.
So, it is very correct to say that the energy of the universe has "always" existed. And that goes for the universe itself as well.
Since "always" = a period of time. All of time, to be exact.
And if you go back in time... at ANY point
in time, the universe (and all energy contained therein), existed.
There is no point
in time when it didn't.
There seems to be quite a bit of chemical experimentation about how the chemistry could have come together.
And lots of evidence.
For example, back in the day creationists used to say that the "building blocks of life" are "too complex" to have formed naturally.
Today, we know this is not the case at all. We know that these building blocks form all the time in nature. We even find them in space rocks in abundance.