For historical reasons, the term "creation" is laden with the notion of a creating agency or cause external to the created objects. In this important respect, this word differs from the neutral term "origination." Moreover, the terms "nothing" or "from nothing" as used in conjunction with "creation" carry the connotation of the traditional theological notion "ex nihilo." Alas, the recent literature on some versions of quantum cosmology contain inappropriate uses of these locutions which may suggest that this theory abets creationism. For example, such physicists as Hartle and Hawking (1983) and Vilenkin (1983) speak misleadingly of certain primordial physical states as "nothing," even though these states are avowedly only "a realm of unrestrained quantum gravity," which is "a state with no classical space-time" (Vilenkin, 1983). By the same token, in his essay "Creation of the Universe as a Quantum Process," the English physicist Isham (1988, p. 401) characterized Hartle and Hawking's (1983) version of quantum cosmology as featuring "creation from nothing." Indeed, he adds: "The creation from nothing is precisely that."
Adolf Grünbaum (1991)