One of the most talked-about assertions in the whole book is that we
don't need the idea of God to explain what sparked the creation of the
universe.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set
the universe going," Hawking and Mlodinow write.

Instead, the laws of science alone can explain why the universe began.
Our modern understanding of time suggests that it is just another
dimension, like space. Thus it doesn't have a beginning.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will
create itself from nothing," they write. "Spontaneous creation is the
reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists,
why we exist.