I think the problem is with the concept of eternality being mixed up with old religious tropes, plus the fact that we tend to have a quasi-religious awe of anything vast and ancient, especially when it's not 100% understood.

When I as a skeptic hypothesize that the universe might be eternal (or as I put it, effectively eternal) I am not doing so to construct some sort of proxy creative agent. I am just pointing out that a discrete starting-point is not necessary to explain the reality that we find ourselves in. If the universe for example turns out to be cyclic, either because the beginning is the end is the beginning (that is, heat death eventually leads to a new big bang) or because that is at least true of our particular universe, then a starting-point is irrelevant and even misleading. Also, if our universe arises out of some other universe, if universes are just bubbling in and out of each other, then the sheer scope of that is so gigantic and beyond our real comprehension as mortal creatures of time, that any actual first cause (personal or not) would be so remote from us (and also indifferent to us) as to be irrelevant. I don't care about the details of the protein folding going on in a particular cell in my body, and what I refer to as "me" is nothing more than a particular configuration of countless such cells and processes anyway. In the same way, in the unlikely event that the multiverse has some sort of sentience it is not about us and so who gives a fig.

Religion in general is telling its followers how special and personally fawned over they are by and to some all-powerful being. This has positive and negative aspects (one yearns for intimacy with the deity but also fears the displeasure of the deity) but it is still all about the follower and why they don't deserve to be mortal and ignorant and frightened, to die like everyone else. Part of this specialness is trying to render the cosmos fully comprehensible and coherent and meaningful, to reduce it to a simple set of concepts and rules.

When you're dealing with a complex and vast and ancient thing like reality, this is heading in exactly the wrong direction if you're interested in actual understanding, but it's the easy way out if you're able to buy into it.

The infinite regress of the created god(s) stands in one corner, but doesn’t really make sense. I can’t conclude that there’s a necessity for one or many. In the other corner stands cosmological Darwinism. Energy, to use a term, adapting itself through infinite metamorphoses. My money would be on the later, but who knows?

"why does it make sense when skeptics think that reality (time, matter, natural laws) has just always existed?"

For one; the difference in complexity.

Ancient people who observed nature and realized it was all in motion, could not explain the origin of it and posited unmoved movers, 'gods', as an answer.
What they did was reject a simple answer, like an ocean of components in steady motion as they saw in nature, and instead turned to a vastly complex and convoluted fantasy of a powerful male mind from a supernatural dimension giving stuff a push.

It's not inconceivable for something to alway exist. Scientists say there will be heat-death. But as of yet, no one is saying matter itself is going to dematerialize into nothingness, in which case the components of the universe - regardless of how it got started - will continue to exist for ever.
Which doesn't make is a stretch to believe they have always existed in some form.

The problem with them saying "god" "Does not need a creator" is that they use the opposite argument when they try to prove that god exists, they say "Look around you, in order for a complex universe like this to exist, there must have been a creator." thus logically contradicting themselves.
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As for claiming that reality always existed, I would force them to be more specific . . . Whose reality? Something has to exist to experience "reality", a fortiori, the whole etymology of the word would demand it:
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reality (n.)
1540s, "quality of being real," from French réalité and directly Medieval Latin realitatem (nominative realitas), from Late Latin realis (see real (adj.)). Meaning "real existence, all that is real" is from 1640s; that of "the real state (of something)" is from 1680s. Sometimes 17c.-18c. also meaning "sincerity." Reality-based attested from 1960. Reality television from 1991.

They will likely claim that it is "god's reality". Then, if you really wanted to fuck with their heads, you could ask the question "How could god experience reality, prior to creation of the universe?" Time cannot exist without the universe first existing, and given that there is nothing there to experience, how can anything be experienced as reality?
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But as the Russians would say, в конце концов (ultimately), what really utterly destroys their arguments, beyond repair, is two words that they just cannot deal with - "Prove it".

The answer is nobody actually knows. The believer says he does because he believes that there is a god who is the creator. The unbeliever says he doesn’t know and is still looking for answers. Only the believer is certain, even without any evidence of a creator, whereas the unbeliever is truthful enough to say that he doesn’t know, but without any evidence can’t subscribe to the god theory.

The answer is "we don't know".

At the moment, we cannot speculate what existed before our universe as we can only get back as far as the Big Bang, which is currently the best explanation we have for how this universe came into being. We do not know whether or not there is anything else that exists in the cosmos.
Appealing to a higher 'being' as the explanation only adds another layer of complexity. Why invent something more complex with unnatural properties to explain what appears to be a natural phenomenon?

I could hypothesise many different explanations that do not need a magical creator - but without the means (including knowledge, research facilities or funding) to test these, the best I can say is "I don't know how the universe came to exist" Appeal to a higher power only creates more questions and is just special pleading to exempt their deity from problem of infinite regress that they are trying to address.

I like the simulation theory especially when combined with super symmetry that exposes self correcting html like code throughout the universe. It just makes sense to me.

“God” is just a word denoting the ground of reality. It’s something we can not understand, and to argue about it is futile.

You make a good point. Lots of people seem to have no trouble with nature just sort of accidentally falling into existence, imposing unbreakable laws, and accidentally bringing abut life. Nature herself seems to have God-like powers.

If some people want to call it God I’m fine with that, but no matter what you call it, we should remember that Ultimate Reality is a total mystery and no one has the least idea of its nature. We don’t even know what we ourselves are and we are baffled and bewildered by our conscious awareness.

The concept of creation is just a shallow human idea with no real meaning. Our very concept of existence holds no water—modern physics says as much.

And then there's the question of what god was doing before he pulled off the creation. He was creating a hell for people who ask all these unanswerable questions.

This is stemming from a misunderstanding. Skeptics don't think reality has always existed. We can trace the origins of the time and space continuum back to the big bang, at which point all matter already existed in a singularity and all of time and everything we can know about the universe starts from that point, but no one can say what conditions precipitated it. Obviously everything being generated spontaneously out of nothing is unlikely, but we can't bein to conceive of or describe what might have been before that since our concepts of thingness and time entirely depend on being in the confines of the time and space between that singularity and now.

The philosophical issue you're talking about is called "turtles all the way down." If you keep asking "and what happened before that?" of a religious person or a skeptic alike at some point they have to admit to being clueless. The only difference is the skeptic will admit cluelessness sooner. The religious person will continue making shit up to pretend to know. The earth is on the back of a giant turtle, and whats below that? It's standing on another turtle. And whats below that? It's turtles all the way down.

I think the people who use the "who created God?" argument typically think there was a beginning. Sure, they might think that the there was something before the beginning, but since we can never truly find out whatever it was, it's not part of their reality.

I'd like to think the people who believe the universe has always existed wouldn't typically use that argument against a theist. I don't believe the universe had a beginning, and while I acknowledge the big bang is the leading scientific theory, I will always be skeptical of it as well. Some think the universe goes through cycles of big bangs, I don't, but I'd like to think those people wouldn't use that argument either. To believe in something eternal, even in a physical, non supernatural way.. it'd be hypocritical to use that argument.

On a side note, that's actually an ok argument against the simulation theory for those leaning towards a beginning. If we are living in a simulation created by another non supernatural lifeform, who created the simulation they're living in? And who created the reality of the creators of the creators of the simulation? I mean, if you believe that our reality is a simulation, there is no reason you shouldn't believe that our creators' reality was created as well.. and so on.

I have contemplated the origin of everything quite often through life, and must admit that it truly escapes my ability fully grasp not only the idea of the infinite, but also the concept that there should be anything at all, much less what is and from whence it came.

However, I also am wise enough to recognize that our species has struggled to understand other concepts that were similarly baffling to us throughout our history, yet when we put aside mysticism and adopted the scientific method, we gained great understanding. While we still have a long way to go in many areas, on a long enough time line, if we continue to keep an open mind and "stand on the shoulders of giants", we may eventually be able to answer questions like this. But whatever the case, magic has never been the answer, nor will it ever be.

Matter and natural laws have always existed. Anything else would contradict natural laws. Time, on the other hand, is a measurement of motion and did not exist before humans made the measurement.

It is religion that insists that something cannot come of nothing and therefore existence must have a creator. Thus the paradox of “what created the creator?”
I make no such assertion. As far as I’m concerned, maybe it came from nothing. Maybe it has always been. I don’t need to explain with magic that explicitly contradicts itself.