That’s a good point, David. The average church-goer, let alone the general public, likely do have that conception of nothing=vacuum, so I guess it’s no real surprise that they are often conflated. In fact, it’s hard for me personally to conceive of “true” nothing *without* bringing up such a mental image of infinite, dark, “space”. But, in fact, the consensus cosmological model is that “empty” space *itself* was created along with the Universe from some prior substrate.
The trend in theoretical cosmology (and I hasten to add this is quite outside of my field) nowadays has been to postulate some sort of multi-dimensional “bulk” out of which our own 4D space-time originated somehow. Of course this “bulk” itself would constitute a physical “something”, and so doesn’t really get at the fundamental philosophical question of “why something rather than nothing?”. This relatively new and currently speculative “M-theory” merely pushes it back further into new frontiers, if indeed it turns out to be correct. For my part, this is a source of excitement and awe at the ever unfolding and deepening nature of physical reality that science is uncovering. Rather than any sort of threat to orthodox belief in God as Creator, it serves to uncover and qualify the riches thereof.
