"it is not necessary to invoke God to ... get the Universe going".

God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, Britain's award-winning physicist has said.

In his new book, The Grand Design, to be released this month, Stephen Hawking argues that "because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing".

The book, written with Leonard Mlodinow, a US physicist, is to be published on September 9.

In an extract published in the British newspaper The Times on Thursday, Hawking says that spontaneous creation is the reason there is something - as opposed to nothing, and that unravelling a complex series of theories will explain the universe.

Hawking reportedly argues "it is not necessary to invoke God to ... get the Universe going".

In his previous book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had appeared to accept the possibility of a creator, saying the discovery of a complete theory would allow humans to "know the mind of God"

link