Q:

Can an eternal universe be created?

In both Christian and Islamic thought the universe is created and this is taken to mean that the universe had a definite beginning. Philosophically we can justify this position by arguing that were we to trace time back it can only go back a finite amount of time.
But suppose that the universe was eternal. It exists now and it has always existed. Putting aside the problem of time, that is, how can an infinite amount of time pass which is perhaps partially resolved by postulating a cyclical universe, we can still ask whether a God could create an eternal universe. Or, in other words, does the notion of an eternal universe dispense with the notion of creation altogether?
Let us examine time in the simple-minded analogy of geometry:
For the usual notion of a created universe, we make a point on the ground, right here, to mark the origin. As time passes we trace a straight line right off that point. This line stretches on. Geometrically we get a half-infinite line stretching in some direction, say, to the East. Now for the eternal universe we have no origin to get us started as we did before, but having the power of the imagination at hand, we simply posit an infinite line.
We stand outside of that line looking at this line that represents the eternal universe.
It seems then plausible that an eternal universe doesn't necessarily dispense with the notion of creation. It appears that it can even more mark the fact that, if creation did happen, it must have happened outside of time, space and causality.
One notes that an eternal universe could be created. Noting that there is a present time, the universe appears then to be created in media res.

A:

Let's restrict ourselves to these definitions of create and eternal: 
Create: bring (something) into existence.
Eternal: lasting or existing forever; without end or beginning.
Then the answer is no.
You can not bring something eternal into existence because that presupposes that it did not exist before it was created. By definition anything that once did not exist and now does exist is not eternal.
This is perhaps just babble in semantics but it is what your questions asks.
However, to not kill the fun of the question, perhaps we can think of eternal as relative to something. It may be possible that something is eternal in relation to one thing but not in relation to something else.

A:

Creation is a concept of the Abrahamic religions but the concept does not exist in Eastern religions or philosophy. 
I always find it amusing that philosophers (and scientists) in the West want to divorce their philosophical musings and  scientific cosmologies from religion but they find it hard to get rid of the concept of creation. The universe, or universes, are "projected" out of the Godhead which is neither existence nor non-existence, since it is impossible to 'create' something out of nothing. 
What we see as the universe is simply a cycle in the eternal projection. What the Abrahamic religions see as the creation of the universe is seen by the East as the start of a cycle. A cycle ebbs and flows, expanding and contracting. Once it contracts, there is a period of quiescence, after which a new cycle of expansion begins. The projection is eternal. It always was and always will be. 
Even without a Godhead, why not an eternal universe that ebbs and flows throughout eternity? Outside of the sensual universe there is no time, hence eternal. 
Apologies to Dawkins and Hawking, but I find their logic lacking for a creation out of nothing. Their minds are still caught up in their childhood education that there was a creation at all.        

A:

The greek word for nature, physis (ϕύσις), was defined by Aristotle as "a kind of being (ούςία). Specifically ... the production of itself, from out of itself, unto itself."
So, in this manner of speaking, the universe is creating itself all the time.
Reference quotation:-

From Thomas Sheehan's translation of Martin Heidegger's, "On the Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1", PDF page 33.
In section: "translations, 1998" : http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/people/tom-sheehan/publications/

