God didn't create the universe, Stephen Hawking says in his latest book, "A Grand Design."

Rather, the renowned physicist writes, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."

Everything – created from nothing? The assertion begged a reply from the author of "Nothing Created Everything: The Scientific Impossibility of Atheistic Evolution."

"It is embarrassingly unscientific to speak of anything creating itself from nothing," said Ray Comfort, a best-selling author and acclaimed minister who's confronted and confounded some of the world's most accomplished atheists. "Common sense says that if something possessed the ability to create itself from nothing, then that something wasn't nothing; it was something – a very intelligent creative power of some sort."

Hawking commits several "greater fallacies of logic," says Comfort.

"Hawking has violated the unspoken rules of atheism," he said. "He isn't supposed to use words like 'create' or even 'made.' They necessitate a creator and a maker. Neither is he supposed to let out that the essence of atheism is to believe that nothing created everything, because it's unthinking. It confirms the title of another book I wrote, called 'You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think.'"

Comfort continues his dissection: "Nor should an atheist speak of gravity as being a 'law,' because that also denotes the axiom of a Law-giver. Laws don't happen by themselves. But look at how careless the professor was with his, 'The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe.'"

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