Stephen Hawking says God not needed for creation -- maybe

In his new book "The Grand Design," physicist Stephen Hawking says God wasn't necessary for the Big Bang to have happened.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing," Hawking notes.
It's true that the creation of everything from nothing (ex nihilo) doesn't prove the existence of God -- but it also doesn't prove that there isn't a God. That same law of gravity keeps me sitting at my desk as I type rather than floating away. I can't make an argument for or against God's existence -- only an argument for gravity.

Many news reports seem to say that Hawking is at least implying either that there isn't a God, or that he's unnecessary as the primary cause of everything. Not knowing the context yet, I can only say that he's arguing that the the laws of physics as we know them allow the universe to spontaneously create. What isn't addressed is where those laws came from.