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I recently came into argument with an atheist regarding the origin of the universe. I told him that it is an unsolved problem in physics and in cosmonogy in particular. But he kept saying that it has already been confirmed by scientific evidence that "matter and the universe were created out of nothing by random fluctuations" citing these two statements below:

Inflation is today a part of the Standard Model of the Universe supported by the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure (LSS) datasets. Inflation solves the horizon and flatness problems and naturally generates density fluctuations that seed LSS and CMB anisotropies, and tensor perturbations (primordial gravitational waves).

http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217751X09044553

The inflation theory is a period of extremely rapid (exponential) expansion of the universe prior to the more gradual Big Bang expansion, during which time the energy density of the universe was dominated by a cosmological constant-type of vacuum energy that later decayed to produce the matter and radiation that fill the universe today.

http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_cosmo_infl.html

I'm not really familiar with scientific jargon but I'm dubious if these statements especially the bolded part actually translate or mean "matter were created out of nothing by random fluctuations." Can anyone translate these statements in layman's terms?

user127946
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Your friend has heard one little thing about our current understanding and distorted it beyond recognition.

Our current theories take us back to a time of very high energy density but have nothing to say about what came earlier. The overall distribution of matter that we observe today can be explained by considering fluctuations in the density of that early, high-energy-density state.

If there were an original state of "nothing" what would be fluctuating? There would be nothing to fluctuate.

garyp
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