DAVID: I am quoting him because the 'no boundaries' proposal specifically says there is no 'before' before the Big Bang. It specifically implies a creation of some sort. Naturally I choose God.

dhw: If there is no ‘before’, there is no God. If there is a ‘before’, it can just as easily have been mindless energy and matter as a conscious mind. I really don’t think for one moment that the atheist Hawking thinks his theory specifically implies a “creation” that would allow for your God.

DAVID: Of course he won't. And 'before' only God existed outside of time.

“Time” is irrelevant if you accept my definition of time as a sequence of before-now-after. Either there was or there was not a “before” the Big Bang. Hawking says there wasn’t, and you say there was. If there was a before, that does not prove that the before must have been a God. It could have been eternal energy and matter.