Quantum Creationism -- Is it Science, or is it Religion?
The 'Universe from Nothing' speculations are neither religion nor science in my opinion. They are
metaphysical speculations. Implausible metaphysical speculations in my opinion, because they assume a big part of what they purport to explain, such as the formal principles of quantum mechanics. Some of them throw in some ad-hoc speculative stuff like a peculiar sort of 'matter' (or 'false vacuum' or something) appearing as a 'quantum fluctuation' out of 'nowhere' possessing repulsive gravity that inflates exponentially due to internal repulsion, while always maintaining a constant density, combined with some mumbo-jumbo about what mathematical sign to give gravity so that conservation laws are obeyed. [So... where did those conservation laws come from??])
I'm inclined to think that you simply
can't use physics to explain the origin of
everything since physics is derived from our observation of how the physical universe behaves and hence is part of what needs to be explained.
I'm hugely unconvinced by some parts of current cosmology. Metaphysical speculation is fine, even when scientists are doing it instead of philosophers. But speculations shouldn't be fed to laypeople as if they possessed all the authority of science.
Where I seemingly part company with Eugene is that I don't believe that the only alternative is some kind of return to religious mythology. Those aren't the only two alternatives available. The most obvious alternative, and by far the most intellectually justifiable one, is to simply
admit that we don't currently know how reality originated (and perhaps mankind never will know).