Elsewhere in the book, they make the jarring claim that “because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing…”. (18) Whoah – doesn’t this put the “cart before the horse”?! I think it can be easily deduced that gravity (as well as the other fundamental forces) are features of the universe; not features that preceded the universe. If gravity preceded the universe, where did gravity come from? Indeed, Hawking himself makes the statement on page 83 of the book that “the laws of nature in our universe arose from the big bang”. So which came first, the laws or
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