A very nice article, Glenn, even when I do not support your going out on a limb, you did an excellent job writing clearly, pointing to the required parts to understand the universe for what it is. So, kudos.
Where I disagree (and I believe I disagree with many physicists) is that space and time are phenomena. It means that they are indeed real but they do not have any attributes of their own.
Your words that "the Infinite Universe can do much, but it cannot produce perfectly empty space" tell me that you do not treat space as a phenomenon. You actually see space as a something with attributes and not as a something without attributes.
A phenomenon is real but not self-based, and an example is the Eye of the Storm. Inside the eye, we do not have what ultimately makes the storm the storm: there is no wind inside the eye. There is air inside the eye (depressed due to the tugging storm), but that air does not make the eye the eye. It is the entire circumstance of the storm that establishes that additional outcome, that nevertheless does not have any attributes of its own.
Said differently, the Eye is not the control center of the Storm. Rather, the Storm establishes the Eye. It is a phenomenon.
So, I am disagreeing with you for changing the unless to until. It is unless. Space is a phenomenon, has no borders, does not move, does not interact with anything.
--
Therefore, we can know for sure that space is infinite. It is actually the only aspect that can be infinite in the universe, nothing else is. Same for time; the only aspect that can be eternal.
Energy is the required ingredient for Matter. Yet that original Energy transformed, and therefore that Energy did not stay the same eternally. It became quarks (linear Matter of neutrons and protons) and electrons were added to the mix (non-linear Matter) to neutralize the positive charge of the protons). The electrons indicate that there is plenty Energy left that we cannot detect.
Entropy has a final stage after which entropy does not increases; a balance is established, and from your words I can see you come to similar conclusions although you formulate it differently.
Other than that, I am pretty much with you, although I adhere to the Big Whisper theory and not the Big Bang theory. To end up with Matter, all we need is the transformation of original energy into quarks and we're done. The Big Whisper model is therefore distinct (named for Penzias and Wilson who detected the whisper of the materialization process).
I am a structural philosopher and physicists tend to not be good at looking at the big picture. You seem quite adapt to it, so kudos once more. I'd like it much if you read my article about two closed systems, there being more than one.
https://fred-rick.medium.com/two-closed-systems-not-one-3d66da5b8dff
