Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the universe

[Welsh cake]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scien...verse.html

In his latest book, The Grand Design, Hawking said: “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.”

He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

So according to Hawking, because of the law of gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing and the Big Bang was the inevitable result of the laws of physics.

I would like to get hold of his new book and find out how he reaches these conclusions.

I'm fairly sure the quote is being taken way out of context. I'm not one to doubt the man, but something doesn't sound right with this premise

Gravity alone is simply fundamental interaction, particles in the universe that interact with one another. It does not take into account Strong interaction, Electroweak interaction or Weak interaction which are also fundamental in reality. It mentions nothing about the origin of the universe, or explores the possibility that dark energy might have accelerated the expanse of the cosmos, since prior to that everything was at a transfinite super-dense concentration of energy and it would have to be immense to escape the gravitational constant.

I'm getting vibes that Hawking is actually elaborating on Quantum gravity within theoretical physics instead.