Can something come from nothing?

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Today, there is a consensus among scientists that a Big Bang occurred and led to the creation of the universe. But what was there before the Big Bang? Where did all matter and energy come from? Did it come from nothing or was there something before our universe? Can something actually be created from nothing or must it always come from something else? The same applies to the disappearance of something – can something simply vanish, or does it still go somewhere?

Note: There is a discussion on the talk page.

• Pro Logically, it should be impossible for something to come from nothing or something to disappear into nothing. It's simply unimaginable. A chair, for example, cannot simply disappear. It must exist somewhere in some form. If you burn a chair, it turns to ash. It may no longer be a chair, but the particles that made up the chair have dispersed into the air or are in the ash. The particles have not disappeared, but they still exist.
  • Objection A chair disappearing or appearing out of nothing may be unimaginable (I can imagine it though) but the criteria for logical impossibility is that a proposition should be inconsistent or contradictory like 'A married bachelor exists'. 'A chair disappeared completely.' doesn't fit that form.
• Pro Making something appear or disappear out of nowhere would be considered magic. That is simply not possible.

• Con There never was nothing and something always existed so something didn't come from nothing but is the natural 'default' where approaches to explain why that is so are needed.^[1]
  • Objection Whether something always existed is completely orthogonal to the question of whether something can come from nothing in principle.
    • Objection If something always existed, then it can be said it came from nothing since it always existed and there was nothing before it.
      • Objection Because the terminology around 'something' and 'nothing' can get quite confusing, I propose that we instead talk about a certain object, which we can call Object A (this object could be anything you want). 1) If we are to say that Object A came from nothing, then Object A must have begun to exist at some point; in other words, Object A couldn't have always existed. 2) If Object A didn't begin to exist, then it must've always existed and therefore it didn't *come* from anywhere, it simply always *was*.
      • Objection Except that by "nothing" is really meant nothing, or in other words, the absence of substances. Since there is something, which is all things in the universe, you cannot therefore say that nothing exists. Nothing can have arisen from nothing, because there must always have been something, namely something.
        • Objection This is the precise reasoning why something can be said came from nothing if time started at a certain point and there was no before.
  • Objection Why is the approach of that "nothing came from nothing" the natural default for explaining why something is so? Then they might as well say, "we don't know what it originated from," instead of saying, "nothing caused it to originate, it originated by itself"?
    • Objection Exactly, we should say that we don't know why anything exists or how exactly the first Universe ultimately came to be in the sense of the ultimate first cause or first existence. That it originated by itself is what is being argued.