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shminux comments on Some recent evidence against the Big Bang - Less Wrong Discussion
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Unrelated to my other comment: this is a decent sample of open problems related to the structure formation and element composition in the early universe. Cosmic inflation is an umbrella term for a number of models designed to solve the horizon and flatness problems by a rapid expansion many orders of magnitude shortly after the big bang. Several predictions of such models have been confirmed, while some others falsified, though with low confidence (e.g. the quadrupole moment in the CMB spectrum). Fine tuning of inflationary parameters is aesthetically the most unsatisfactory feature of inflation, but any known alternative is even worse. I am not qualified to judge the validity of the Steinhardt's claims, but other experts in the field don't seem as pessimistic.
The rapid expansion happens because some mysterious dark energy that is apparently far more abundant than the energy we observe all around us, for no other reason than maybe if anything can happen (multiverse), the entire cosmic web gets produced in the blink of an eye.
You probably mean "was more abundant". Dark energy density (well, stress-energy density, because it's the stress, not energy which causes expansion) due to some hypothetical field is the mechanism for most models of inflation. What we see now is just pitiful leftovers.
That's not a good argument to reject a model. If you have something with predictive power, you use it, until something better comes along.
I don't know what you mean by this.
Again, may I recommend that you learn a topic before making pronouncements about it?
What I mean is that there seems to be larger scale structure, a giant web of filaments and walls and voids, and that its becoming apparent, this basically existed in tact as far as the eye can see.
How'd it get there? Inflation. Which makes the blink of an eye look like eternity.
Basically inflation, dark energy, and the multiverse can arbitrarily accomplish anything at this point. That was the point of the Inflation Debate article. It doesn't ltierally predict anything in particular. We just observe things and try to make models that fit, and say "the multiverse, crazy, huh?"