How is the origin of the universe explained?

well the answer to that question is very simple; science doesn't know. at least not yet. .

>>>Any basic science book will tell you that based on carbon dating, our earth is between 4 and 4.5 billions years old, and our universe is roughly 13 billion years old.

Any basic science textbook says that carbon dating is only accurate in regards to several tens of thousands of years, at best. Longer half lives are needed to properly age very old rocks, such as K-Ar dating. As to the age of the universe, that has been determined by observing the rate of expansion of our universe and the rate of change of the temperature of the CMBR (from WMAP).

As to how it came into existence, no scientist has ignored this question. The simple answer to it so far is that we don't know - there is no known way to test cosmogenic models or observe events before the Big Bang (if there were any, which is unlikely), or even close to the Big Bang due to the fact that the temperature was high enough several billion years ago so that matter was dissociated into a plasma state, which does not permit radiation to pass through it (can't see through plasma). There are theoretical suggestions, such as that quantum fluctuations created the universe, but these ideas are not really testable.

There has to be some kind of existance out there, or we would be existing without existing. You probably don't understand what I'm talking about. Meh.

Three words:

Flying

Spaghetti

Monster