Dear George, I think I have found what is the impasse from your part between you and me, namely, in effect you hold that nothing, absolutely, completely, totally and literally nothing is the origin of everything, and you want people to prove that that is not true, otherwise it is true for you.
From my part, there exists always something even in the status of things in which status of things the universe the one we live in had not begun yet.
That position of yours, namely, that literally nothing is the origin of everything, that is all purely in your mind, for outside and independent of your mind there exists always something, so that nothing, literally nothing has never ever been the default status of things in the totally of reality.
You see, George, when you hold that literally nothing is the origin of everything, then logically you should already stop talking and self-extinguish into nothingness.
On the other hand, that thought and position which is all in your mind, in effect you are using the word nothing, literally nothing as really not literally nothing but something; so it is all just a self-abuse of the original meaning of nothing, literally nothing.
That is what I have noticed about you since way back, that you have the awful habit of conjuring up unrealistic and totally impossible status of things, which therefore can only dwell in your mind, but outside your mind and independent of your mind, there is no status ever where nothing, literally nothing is the status and hence origin of reality.
What I want you to know is that there is the distinction between valid thoughts and invalid thoughts in our mind, what you have are invalid thoughts in your mind, all in your mind.
Valid thoughts have components which are coherent and consistent among themselves even just in our mind, while invalid thoughts like yours, that literally something is the origin of everything in existence, that kind of a thought in your mind, it is an invalid thought, because its components are not coherent and not consistent among themselves, already in your mind.
What you should do is imitate Bertrand Russell, when he finds any concept though valid to be the death of his position that there is no God, he will declare that for him the concept is illegitimate, in effect he will not factor it into his thinking.
See the debate between him and Copleston, in part one, on the cosmological argument, he declares toward the end that the concept of a cause of the word is illegitimate to himself, so Copleston tells him in that case it is impossible to talk with you about it, and Russell proposed that they go into another area of discourse on the issue God exists or not, and they went into next the proof of God from man's religious experience.