Not a simulation, not created by a God: so how did the universe come to be? Can something arise naturally from nothing, after all? Many scientists think so, but not because a god overturned the idea that something cannot come from nothing. They also answer the related question of why there is something rather than nothing.

I’m not going to reiterate their explanation here, as you can read a summary for yourself (I’ve linked to a simple one for the sceptical among us and of course the diagram above makes it all clear.) Suffice to say, the theory demonstrates that ‘something’ came about when quantum particles popped into existence from nothing. We know they are capable of doing this, making them the Uncaused Cause. These particles led to ‘a chunk of inflationary vacuum’, from which, everything else arose..  

And no, Don, unless he’s ‘a chunk of inflationary vacuum’, this is not your God. Nor did he conjure up the chunk .Before it appeared at the quantum level there was, according to this scientific theory, nothing: no God, nothing.