A new book written by famous British physicist, Stephen Hawking, claims that God did not create the universe and the "big bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.

Britain’s award-winning physicist says in the book, "The Grand Design," which he wrote with Leonard Mlodinow, a US physicist, that God had nothing to do with the big bang.

Hawking argues it is not necessary to invoke God to "get the Universe going."

In an excerpt from the book, published in the Times, Hawking says that spontaneous creation is the reason there is something, as opposed to nothing, and that unravelling a complex series of theories would explain the universe.

He says: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."

The book is to be published on September 9th.

In his previous writing, "A Brief History of Time," Hawking accepted the possibility of a creator, saying the discovery of a complete theory would allow humans to "know the mind of God."