The term “Grand Design” was from Albert Einstein who attributed the unknown workings of the universe to a creator. Hawking’s book uses the phrase as a turn of the word to reveal what has been discovered since Einstein proclaimed “God does not play dice” to voice his disagreement with Quantum Theory... which was later proven to be accurate, and Einstein wrong.
How tiresome he is. I feel sorry for him, but he is misleading many. So sad that there is no one in his life to get through to him.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.
It seems even in this brief quote, he admits that there is an intelligence, and I don't believe he thinks, the universe had a plan, and decided at some point to execute the plan, but that is what a creator would do.