String theory and its spawn ekpyrotic theory say there IS a "before the Big Bang." So an eternal universe can still be consistent with a Big Bang. Linde's self-reproducing universe amounts to the same thing.

I like your point about matter and energy being neither created nor destroyed. By any force we know of in THIS universe. But since we're talking about things existing outside our universe, who knows?

No that's not a Creationist opening to invoke God. It's more of an appeal to ekpyrotic theory and the idea something outside our universe could nudge it into expansion and being.

I think a lot of physicists agree with you the universe will turn out to be uncreated and unending. Doesn't quantum mechanics hint at this already?

But the scientists in the article you talk about are speaking of our own space-time and its expansion. That brings us back to a finite length of time for our space-time to have been doing what it's doing.

But what is time?