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Originally Posted by TGS
I guess PKFFW's point is that Hawking doesn't claim to have proved that the universe was not created by god, but rather that there is no need to invoke a creator god to explain anything - even when that "anything" includes the existence of the universe itself.
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That's exactly what his point is.
And of course the principle commonly known as Occam's Razor would suggest that as such, we should, in our attempts to progress our understanding of the universe, work from the starting point of there being no god creator. It's a great starting point that, as Graham points out, does not require any further explanation to work.
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Originally Posted by TGS
In just the same way that explaining how my presents get into my Christmas stocking in terms of the behaviour of known individuals doesn't prove the non-existence of Santa Clause - but does render the Santa Clause story redundant,
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The difference lies in the fact that every known example, without exception, of Christmas presents arriving in the dead of night, can be shown to have been left by someone other than Santa Claus. It is this known fact that makes the Santa Claus story redundant.
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Originally Posted by TGS
so explaining the existence of the universe in terms of science as we currently understand it does not prove the non-existence of a creator god, but...
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On the other hand, we don't actually know how the universe came into being. And if you take into account the theory of multiple universes, we have even less idea how every single other instantiation of the universe came into being.
All that has been shown thus far is that the known laws of physics seem to indicate that the creation of the physical universe could have happened without any intervention from a god creator.
Cheers,
PKFFW