The Big Bang and the Necessity of a Creator

i was reading some creationist arguments recently that spurred me to
think a little (dangerous, i know). a couple of the arguments said
that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a beginning for
the universe. the creationist conclusion is that if the universe has a
beginning then there has to be something that caused it to come into
being that exists outside the universe...aka god! it is also concluded
by creationists through philosophical reasoning that the universe
logically *must have a beginning, but that god doesn't have to have a
beginning because he exists outside of the realm of time. however,
even as a simple layperson (neither scientist, philosopher, or
theologean) i can think of a couple of easy possible answers to both of
these arguments. maybe the professionals out there reading this can
tell me if i'm way off base with any of these:

1. what if the universe itself exists outside of the realm of time?
hey, if god can do it, then why not the universe? what if time is just
one observable attribute of the physical universe? i've read that the
current popular theory is in fact that time itself started at the big
bang. i don't quite understand it fully, but to me it makes sense that
the universe may actually be timeless, and that our observation of time
is just a matter of perspective.

2. isn't it possible that the expansion that leads us to beleive in a
big bang is just a phenomenon within the part of the universe that we
are able to see? is it possible that it's just a fairly localized
occurence? perhaps once we're able to observe further out we'll
discover that other parts of the universe aren't expanding at all.
isn't it kind of presumptious of us to think that we can extrapolate
with certainty that the "entire" universe is expanding when we don't
know really what lies just beyond the reach of our current
observations? perhaps small fluctuations in the degree of expansion
are measurable in objects within our view even now but have been missed
because of the margin of error inherent in our measuring methods.

3. perhaps our assumptions about the big bang being the beginning of
it all may not be quite right because of the break down of the natural
laws as we approach the big bang. it is generally theorized as far as
i know that the laws we observe now were formed at some time in the
past, and didn't always behave in the same way as they do now. if the
rules change as you go back in time couldn't that produce some very
strange results? perhaps the math we use to produce our theories isn't
adequate because of those evolving natural laws. i think we might be
trying to measure things with a rubber yardstick.

just a couple of my thoughts. i would be very interested to know what
others think.