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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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    These questions aren't part of physics, so it can by no mean answer them. Physics isn't omniscient, and can't answer everything. Your friend is either a dishonest guy trying to fool people in order to convince them to become atheist like he is, or an ignorant who never studied any sciences... – sure Aug 23 '16 at 09:18
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    The theory of inflation is just a theory, and by just I mean it hasn't been proved yet by any means of experience, that is experimentally. It may be confirmed one day, but not yet. It is a theory capable of producing results but it isn't complete yet. In the end, I don't think that inflation is a valid argument. – Constantine Black Aug 23 '16 at 09:26
  • Isn't a "theory" in science basically established fact already like the Theory of Evolution? – user127946 Aug 23 '16 at 09:33
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    Theories are never proven, nor "established". They are world views allowing us to build models that predict what we see more or less well (very well for general relativity). You can't prove that a theory is "true", nor can you prove that its "wrong". – sure Aug 23 '16 at 10:10
  • Bible said there was tohu va bohu, a disorder , a kind of fluctuations. You all agree, then now let come back to physics –  Aug 23 '16 at 10:35
  • And, I mean, a lot of people would argue that it is, but the theory of evolution isn't really "established fact" - its a theory, just like anything else. We could prove it wrong (though, we can't really prove it absolutely right). – auden Aug 23 '16 at 10:52
  • More on creation ex nihilo: How can space and time arise from nothing?, Stephen Hawking says universe can create itself from nothing, but how exactly?, Is it possible all matter in the universe emerges from nothing? – ACuriousMind Aug 23 '16 at 12:43
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    @sure -- While experimentation, observation, and inductive reasoning (the reasoning used in science) are not powerful enough to prove a scientific hypothesis to be correct, they are powerful enough to prove scientific hypothesis to be incorrect. – David Hammen Aug 23 '16 at 13:00
  • @DavidHammen: not true at all either, you can always "prove" that the model you thought you were observing is not the one that is effectively realized, but it is always possible to complexify it to have a correct prediction of almost anything – sure Aug 23 '16 at 14:03
  • Some theories that do not comport with observations are not worth the effort to complexity them into agreement with experiment. In science we call this Occam's razor. – Lewis Miller Aug 23 '16 at 14:19

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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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  • dialectical answer to an off-topic question –  Aug 23 '16 at 10:26
  • So, these statements don't address the origin of matter and the universe, but only address how matter and the universe was formed out of what was already there? Am I correct? – user127946 Aug 23 '16 at 10:34
  • The total mass/energy of the universe may be zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe –  Aug 23 '16 at 11:49
  • @igael Not at all. I described the state of the current main-stream theory. The question appears off topic to us but the OP does not know that the idea is not main-stream. – garyp Aug 23 '16 at 12:03
  • @DirkBruere Ok, but I wouldn't consider that main-stream science at the moment. But that's just my opinion. – garyp Aug 23 '16 at 12:04
  • @user127946 Hmmm. I'll now be careful about adressing "these statements" because I don't know exactly what your friend said. But according to our best understanding of things, yes. We have a lot of evidence that the universe was in a hot dense state at some point, and we have some idea (some competing ideas) about the evolution to what we see now. What happened before that hot dense state is unknown, subject of current research. There are a number of speculative ideas. – garyp Aug 23 '16 at 12:08