> ...precise laws that conserve both matter and energy; therefore, nothing gets created and nothing gets destroyed...

Not your main point but just wanted to point out that because of inflation, energy actually isn't conserved! It's kind of surprising, but consider light getting redshifted from a far away galaxy. Its frequency drops as it travels through space and thus, so does its energy. This happens with the beam not interacting with anything, so the lost energy doesn't really go anywhere.