Nothing means NOT ANYTHING — no possibilities, no properties, no potentialities. Some atheist physicists (Lawrence Krauss) equivocate by treating "nothing" as a quantum vacuum with energy, gravity, and space.

William Lane Craig's analogy: "nothing stopped the German advance" doesn't mean something called Nothing stopped them. Krauss's "nothing" includes a roiling sea of fluctuating energy, gravity, and space — that's something, not nothing. If true nothingness could cause something, why only universes? Why not basketballs and Beethoven popping into existence?