Religion

Here is Hawking's view, I would assume that you have studied the matter:

This subatomic ball of everything is known as the singularity (not to be confused with the technological singularity during which artificial intelligence will overtake humans). Inside this extremely small, massively dense speck of heat and energy, the laws of physics and time as we know them cease to function. Put another way, time as we understand it literally did not exist before the universe started to expand. Rather, the arrow of time shrinks infinitely as the universe becomes smaller and smaller, never reaching a clear starting point.

According to TechTimes, Hawking says during the show that before the Big Bang, time was bent — "It was always reaching closer to nothing but didn't become nothing," according to the article. Essentially, "there was never a Big Bang that produced something from nothing. It just seemed that way from mankind's point of perspective."

In in a lecture on the no-boundary proposal, Hawking wrote: "Events before the Big Bang are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them. Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang."

https://www.livescience.com/61914-stephen-hawking-neil-degrasse-tyson-beginning-of-time.html

Hence, one empirical miracle is granted, in a sense is granted and we can explain the rest. I imagine you can see the humor there. I tend to try on different views like clothing to see how they feel and fit, but my own biases are a primary concern and therefore, subject to investigation and contemplation. That is why I don't find that much value in a view that "this premise is true" because, "that premise is false" to be universally applicable or necessarily accurate because it falls prey to dualism which is most certainly relative to say the least. Since relative information of any kind is subject to innumerable variables and the conditions and the context of that information can be said to be also relative and relevant to the information, its interpenetration and the biases of the interpreter, then the problem of a correlative absolute as a foundation comes into question in regards to the fundamentals and foundations of knowledge itself.

Keep in mind that, if you are looking for an good argument about the validity of theism, I would not be the one to approach on that. I consider it to be a political/philosophical debate and not scientific, per se.

It is more a matter of point of view and the repeated category errors that ensue. I am not invested in either one exclusively, but fully aware of the strategies and premises that both sides utilize in order to substantiate their views and argue about it. And, after over forty-years of investigation, I also do not take a completely neutral view as that would also be erroneous. Rather, my interest is in the overall constructs that are devised and presented and the biases that are exhibited in defense of atheism, anti-theism and theism. I find it is not at all necessary or even scientific to yield, in a reactionary way to any bias if and when possible, but it can yield some intriguing insights into the transparency of complete immersion in conceptually constricted views of reality.

If you like a challenge to your own biases, then I recommend the book, Biocentrism, (Lanza). That is not to convince you of anything, but to present an interesting and provocative, scientifically-based model that suggests a biological implication in the very constants we observe in the Universe. If anything, it might be more fun than merely debating hackneyed, political views on science vs. religion which, often, are based on misunderstandings, and as I said, gross category errors while assuming that both views are in no way compatible, which is far too simplistic and superficial for my treatment of the subjects.