Then the "universe", or "gravity", or "whatever came before the big bang", was always there.
Sorry, but dissing Hawking for his comment and sticking God in there doesn't accomplish anything. You've only moved it one step back.
How so? All I did was say that Hawking's view that nothing created something is no different than my view that God was, is and will be. Neither of us have any scientific proof to back it up at all. By extension, he is just as silly as I would be for claiming something to be scientific fact without showing any proof whatsoever.
The hilarious part is Christian theology states explicitly that God cannot be observed by people at all. So at least my statement of belief is backed up as being just that, a belief.
But that’s the whole point of the argument. Hawking has only pushed everything “one step back”. The problem is he doesn’t recognise that. He thinks that he has disproved the entire contention of the existence of God based on this theoretical postulation that “nothing” can become “something”. And of course he hasn’t.