Can the universe come from nothing if space-time is emergent?

Once scientists have come to the conclusion that space-time is not fundamental, but emergent, now many things will change in physics and cosmology. One such change is that cosmologists can no longer hold that the universe has originated from nothing.

This is because an entity that is emergent cannot emerge from just anything or nothing; it can emerge from some particular entity or entities only. Those scientists who are saying that the universe can and will create itself from nothing because its total energy is zero and because there is a force such as gravity, are also saying along with it that space-time can also originate from nothing. So, here they are claiming that at the beginning of the universe space-time was fundamental because it had come straight from nothing, thus not requiring the prior presence of any particular entity/entities from which only it could emerge in case it was emergent.

But, whatever knowledge scientists have acquired so far about the external world is from the present universe only. From the present universe, scientists have acquired this knowledge about space-time that it is not fundamental. So, if they now claim that at the beginning of the universe space-time was fundamental, then our questions to them will be these: From where have they acquired the knowledge that at the beginning of the universe space-time was fundamental? Is it from the present universe? Or, is it from some supernatural source? Or, is it their intuition?

Have they themselves observed the universe directly coming from nothing? If not, then what is their source of knowledge that at the beginning of the universe space-time was fundamental?

So, if they cannot give any evidence in support of their contention that at the beginning of the universe space-time was fundamental, then they have no justified reason to claim that the universe can originate from nothing because its total energy is zero.

As there is no evidence that space-time was fundamental at the beginning of the universe, so the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from this is that it was emergent at the beginning also. As emergent space-time can only emerge from something spaceless, timeless and immaterial, so from this we can conclude that the universe has also originated from something that is spaceless, timeless and immaterial.

Again, if an entity is emergent, then it cannot be the case that it was fundamental at one stage and then became emergent at a later stage by losing its fundamental nature. If it is emergent now, then earlier also it was emergent and in future also it will remain emergent. That means space-time was emergent at the beginning of the universe as well. As emergent space-time can only emerge from something that is spaceless, timeless and immaterial, so we stick to our earlier conclusion that the universe has also originated from something that is spaceless, timeless and immaterial.