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This stuff is fun to think about. I have three questions in mind:

Is there any use thinking about a parallel universe which can never be reached from ours? Isn't it a little like Schroedinger's cat, neither real nor unreal, remote from all powers of our observation?
If the scientists do succeed in creating a universe in a laboratory, are they not doing what the God of this universe did in Genesis/the Big Bang? Are they then worthy of worship by any life forms that develop in the new universe?
If things go poorly in such an experiment, could the new universe somehow consume or damage our own? Would Brahma suddenly become Shiva?

-ccm

1) Is there any use thinking about a parallel universe which can never be reached from ours?

First of all, we don't know whether a parallel universe 'can never be reached' from ours. Second, if there are multiple universes, then they very well may interact in some way, and if they do, then the interactions would be predictable and describable, and in that event, they may be of use to us. In other words, if other universes are interacting with our own, then we cannot fully describe the physics of our own without accounting for said interactions.
These issues might not be of any immediate practical consequence for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years, but that's beside the point. We won't know until we know.

If the scientists do succeed in creating a universe in a laboratory, are they not doing what the God of this universe did in Genesis/the Big Bang? Are they then worthy of worship by any life forms that develop in the new universe?

Well, my personal answer would be: No, in that "the God of this universe" is indistinguishable from a phenomenon that doesn't exist, and phenomena that don't exist don't do anything at all, which means there's nothing to emulate.
However, if for no scientific reason at all one assumes the existence of God, then the answer is a qualified yes. The scientists would be equivalent to deist concepts of God, and moreover, would be as worthy of worship by any consequent lifeforms as a deist God would be worthy of worship by us.

If things go poorly in such an experiment, could the new universe somehow consume or damage our own? Would Brahma suddenly become Shiva?

Not from what I've gathered. Or to be more precise, the physics as we currently understand them say that the answer is no. Any such universe would spin off on its own spacetime plane of existence. In any case, long before we get to the stage where we might be spinning off universes, if that's actually doable, we should have a Theory of Everything that makes clear what would happen.
I have an article somewhere in my bookmarks that discusses this specific question. I'll see if I can track it down and post the link.

2. If the scientists do succeed in creating a universe in a laboratory, are they not doing what the God of this universe did in Genesis/the Big Bang? Are they then worthy of worship by any life forms that develop in the new universe?

Personally, I wouldn't want to be their God. I'd just patent them.

Here it is. The Big Lab Experiment: Was our universe created by design?

Relevant excerpt:

It struck me that there was a hitch in this scheme. If you started off a Big Bang in a lab, wouldn't the baby universe you created expand into your own universe, killing people and crushing buildings and so forth? Linde assured me that there was no such danger. "The new universe would expand into itself," he said. "Its space would be so curved that it would look as tiny as an elementary particle. In fact, it might end up disappearing altogether from the world of its creator."
But why bother making a universe if it's going to run away from you? Wouldn't you want to have some power over how your creation unfolded, some way of making sure the beings that evolved in it turned out well? Linde's picture was as unsatisfying as Voltaire's idea of a creator who established our universe but then took no further interest in it or its creatures.

That's the same Linde, BTW, that's discussed in the the article that opened the thread. And, if you want to see the answer about 'why bother' and whether you could influence the baby universe, check out the link!

Is there any use thinking about a parallel universe which can never be reached from ours?

Yes, it is conceivably useful. For example, a theory built around this concept might make certain calculations easier or make certain outcomes easier to intuit.

If the scientists do succeed in creating a universe in a laboratory, are they not doing what the God of this universe did in Genesis/the Big Bang?

Have you read the book Cosm? I recommend it. It reflects badly on me I know, but the religious questions raised didn't occur to me until the kidnapping episode quite a ways into the book.

BTW, I'm certain you actually meant "thought by some to have done."

Gregory Benford wrote about a universe-in-a-bottle created in a hadron collider in his novel Cosm.

If the scientists do succeed in creating a universe in a laboratory are they not doing what the God of this universe did…

Not quite, there is still the tiny matter of ex nihilo...

If the scientists do succeed in creating a universe in a laboratory, are they not doing what the God of this universe did in Genesis/the Big Bang?

Maybe our universe is a baby universe in a laboratory in another universe, did ya ever think of that one? ...:^)

Seriously though - what they're talking about is a mini-black hole, with its own event horizon, only its own 'universe' in a technical sense - they would evaporate via Hawking radiation in a fraction of a second. (Such things are probably already created by the constant flux of high-energy cosmic rays bombarding the earth, just at event rates too small to detect.)