Agreed. That is not the part in dispute.
Agreed. That is not the part in dispute.
Therefor something has always existed.
That is the part in dispute.
You are proposing to jump from an analytic statement of pure logic to a synthetic statement about events 14 billion years ago that no one was around to see -- Aristotelian armchair science at its worst. Time is a dimension of reality just like galactic north. Claiming the universe didn't start 14 billion years ago is no different from claiming it doesn't end 14 billion light years north of here -- it's the sort of statement you need to justify with empirical evidence, not mental exercises like "Nothing comes from nothing" or "The universe must be infinitely large because if there were an edge then a spearman standing at the edge could throw his spear beyond it." The ancient Greeks didn't quite have the analytic/synthetic distinction down.
If you still disagree, please entertain for the moment the hypothesis that reality is 14 billion years old. How do you deduce from this that it was created by "true nothing"? Why couldn't it exist without having been created? What is the difference between "(Began to exist) implies (created by true nothing)" and "(Began to exist) implies (created by God)"?
Hard evidence tells us that this island Universe is about 14 billion years old. The best scientific evidence leads to the idea that we live in an infinite multiverse.
The best scientific evidence leads to the Standard Model. There's no infinite multiverse in the Standard Model. The infinite multiverse is a speculative attempt to go beyond the Standard Model, supported by flimsy evidence. If and when the evidence for it becomes solid, it will become the new Standard Model. In the meantime, all we can say about it with confidence is "maybe".
God is a hypothesis. God as a hypothesis has so many problems, that hypothesis cannot be true. It is an a priori claim we can thus ignore. Again, nothing has no potential to create anything. We can rule that out as highly unlikely based on sound reason. If you think it is a good idea to throw reason and rationality out the window for a bad idea, I cannot follow you there.
No, the reason you can't follow me there is because I'm not going there. I was not inviting you take the God hypothesis seriously; I was inviting you to compare your own argument with the God hypothesis and notice how parallel they are. "created by true nothing" as a hypothesis has so many problems, that hypothesis cannot be true.
Do you understand the logical principle that (P implies Q) is an equivalent claim to (not Q implies not P)? In case you don't grasp that,
read up on it.
Assuming you do grasp that principle, apply it to your claim, "That is nothing does not have the potential to become something. Therefor something has always existed." The "therefore" means you are claiming that the one implies the other. Your argument for that implication was "How true nothing could create something is not a fruitful idea." And you have indicated that the "something" you think has always existed is an infinite multiverse. So in a nutshell, your reasoning is:
True nothing can't create something. Therefore true nothing didn't create the multiverse. If true nothing didn't create the multiverse then the multiverse had no beginning. Therefore the multiverse had no beginning. Therefore the multiverse has always existed.
You are relying on "If true nothing didn't create the multiverse then the multiverse had no beginning." as a premise. So apply contraposition to that "if P then Q" step. That premise is equivalent to this premise:
"If the multiverse had a beginning then true nothing created the multiverse."
That is a premise you are relying on. But as you said "How true nothing could create something is not a fruitful idea.". I agree with you on that point. So, since we are agreed that that's not a fruitful idea, why should we accept the above premise? How does the hypothesis that the multiverse had a beginning lead to the conclusion that "true nothing" created it? Show your work.