Universe from Nothing.

You seem to be saying that the laws of physics do not allow for randomness, that everything is predetermined. This is not consistent with the models of the 20th century such as the Heisenberg Principle.

I understand your argument, but it seems to be nothing more than a hypothesis.

If you're uncomfortable at the instant when the universe comes into existence, I should bring back the model I presented here a few years ago:

Just because we sense the flow of time as linear--from our vantage here thirteen billion years after the singularity--doesn't mean that it actually flows that way. I suggest graphing time on a logarithmic scale. That puts the Big Bang at minus infinity. So all questions regarding "what happened before the Big Bang" become as meaningless as "how does matter behave at temperatures below Absolute Zero."

In this model the universe has always existed. Time passed a lot more slowly in those first couple of yoctoseconds, which should make the events of that moment a little easier to analyze and describe.

By "information" you refer to the laws of nature. I know it's easy to speculate about a perfectly functional universe in which f does not = ma, much less that the Theory of Relativity is valid.

Yet we're quite certain that there can be no universe in which 1 + 1 does not = 2. The reason for this is certainty that mathematics is derived from abstractions rather than reality. However, all of those abstractions are formed in our own minds, which are manifestations of the electrical signals in a lump of organic matter which obeys the natural laws. It seems rather arbitrary to say that arithmetic as we know it is valid in any conceivable universe, but Newton's Laws are not, just because we can't quite conceive of a universe with an alternate form of arithmetic.

On the other hand, and more to the point, it could just as easily be true, for reasons we haven't discovered yet because there's a lot of physics we still don't know, that the natural laws we live with are the only ones that can work. So when the Big Bang happened it could only happen this way, and no "intelligence" was required.

Besides, your argument starts to sound too much like theology! And it raises the same question: all right then, where did all of that come from?

That's only true if we graph time on a linear scale. Graph it my way and time has always existed.

That "something" is a totally empty space-time continuum. As I already suggested, it could be that the physical laws we have are the only ones that there could be. To speculate on the nature of a space-time continuum in which there is no matter and no energy is truly getting into the realm of cosmology, that awkward discipline where physics and philosophy merge uncomfortably with pure mathematics.

And I still don't understand why the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not allow for a state of complete entropy (nothing) to change into a state of less-than-complete entropy (something, or in this case the Natural Universe), so long as that new state is temporary. My reading of it assures me that this can indeed happen!