Hawking lost all credibility when he started to become an atheist philosopher, essentially himself buying into the hype that he’s the smartest man in history. He ventured into territory that he had no business venturing into and some of his comments end up sounding like a college student.
His understand of physics is certainly historic, but his understanding of the origins of physics is sophomoric at best. Hawking contradicts himself repeatedly when he talks about the creation of matter.
Yeah. Not sure if he saw money in Dawkins’ cottage industry or just wanted to get some publicity.