I agree that this is a great topic. Personally, I don't believe in a God, as the origins of most of today's organized religions seem to be rooted in human machination and power-mongering, from what I've gleaned from my studies (Council of Nicea anyone?) Also, science continues to steadily chip away at much of what we used to use religion to explain to us.
So, personally, it's a question of what physical process caused the universe to be as it presents itself today. And, as said above, we're a long way from fully explaining that process. Science doesn't definitively know why the universe came from nothing, or what was around before that, or a lot of the answers to the big questions. It may get there in time, or it may not.
Sometimes I get the feeling, that when we try to answer these deep, underlying questions, that we're sort of like ants trying to do calculus, despite our big old brains.
Nevertheless, the attempt to at least define and ponder these questions does seem worthwhile.
Going purely from my gut instinct, I'd say that no, nothing is eternal. I believe that, somehow, something did originate out of nothing. I (and no one else, to my knowledge) can scientifically prove how this happened. The current scientific evidence points to the universe continuing to expand infinitely and eventually completely succumbing to entropy, so that all that's left is a lot of far-flung, lifeless material. But I'm no authority
. I'd say no one really is, but some are more than others.