Hawking FAIL

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing."
http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2010/09/fr-robert-spitzer-sj-to-debate-dr-stephen-hawking-on-larry-king-live.html

Before one gets edgy over Hawking's latest ex cathedra squawk, then, consider a thumbnail version of what Wittgenstein and Toulmin taught us about religion, science, and cosmology. Their message to Hawking? Scientists eager to delete God exceed their job description.
http://chronicle.com/article/Cosmology-Cambridge-Style-/124568

Mathematicians have said that any event with odds of 10 to the 50th power or over is impossible even within the entire time frame of the supposed billions of years popularly assigned for the age of the universe.
http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/27-09-2010/115095-atheism-0/

One of the fundamental properties of the Big Bang Theory is that as we approach the inital point, all physical laws break down. Logically at the initial point where there is no physical matter, no physical law can exist. The law of gravity being a physical law therefore also cannot exist at the beginning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang#Very_early_universe

When Hawking says "because there is such a law such as gravity" he is hanging his assertion entirely on a peg that he agrees is not actually there.