I´ve been getting familiar with ideological atheists and their psychological defense mechanistic logic, like you have observed in terms of denial. You seem to be saying that it is the atheists who "define God using empirical method." I don´t see that. They define God using simplistic stereotypes, when they don´t simply deny Him in reflexive fashion.

As for the empirical method, I believe it is simple enough to take the modern materialistic scientific-type perspective and define God. He is a facet of the Universe, not least of all, which makes the empirical issues a little clearer, including the experiences that K Armstrong refers to, "mythos."

Einstein was no hero for theists, in most sincere respects, despite a nice quote or the other. Michael Faraday was, and LeMaitre would seem to be, for starters.

"Spirit" is an interesting concept. It is one that can be empirically more grounded by studying Therapeutic Psychology, for starters. Since Therapeutic Psychology can help people overcome childhood and other traumas, it has shown fundamental processes related to human character development and the meaning of spiritual growth training. It is not enough to accept Jesus. Jesus himself taught, "Take the plank out of your own eye." To make Jesus more than a presumptuous tyrant of a Savior, we need to elevate the understanding of spiritual growth training that was otherwise demonstrated by St. Anthony of the Desert and the monastic or monk-related traditions and events in Christian history, and in comparative Religion.

Spirit and its relationship to energy and matter then can be examined in greater clarity. Jung, too, is worth citing.

I believe Hawking stated that gravity could explain the creation of something out of nothing, as the theist John Lennox stated his argument.

The distinction you´re making gains clarity by defining the epistemological knowledge domains with clarity.

The point about contingency that you´re making can be flushed out saliently by identifying the nature of physical laws. Scientific Philosophy only identifies them descriptively, and that is part of its mechanistic investigative and explanatory work.

The search for the "uncontingent" being/entity is philosophical, and the "non-materialistic" or "immaterial" character of God, with agency, can be plumbed with the supplementary information that Science supplies. Is God a man/woman on a throne, or do we avoid anthropomorphism thinking we are we reverse reducible to agents with the wave mechanical physical components underlying wave/particle duality and so on in relation to a wave mechanical Creator Entity Agent who understand, through Jesus, His love for us?

I suppose that requires teasing out, and including more clearly Jesus´ role and subordinating Plato-Aristotle to their Christian and eclectic survival, along with, say, the imagination possible because of what might be called "Protestant Jeffersonian" secularism that allows us to test metaphysical doctrines. That might also add a dimension that explains Hawking´s allure with his computerized voice box. In truth, God´s and the Universe´s monistic reality is significantly revealed by Science, but it is only in reverse reductionism/constructionism that we realize that the quantum wave mechanics of love is, in fact, the love of God that Jesus really taught and that frees us into the pluralistic Christian globalized world of the UN community of nations.

The "unnecessary" part is all within the philosophical framework of Science. Trying to assert that "Science says there is no God" is like trying to say, "There is no Love because Love is unnecessary in scientific theories."

Scientism needs to be called the spade that it is.

That´s assuming that a speculated multiverse came into being on its own without the need for an absolute Creator. Now that´s Science Fiction.

We don´t need a philosophical/religious beginning if you think that immersion in Science eliminates all the psychocultural matrix that generated it in the first place, not least of all the Philosophy of which it is but merely a subdomain.

However, since "Science" is in fact not the "Absolute Truth," but merely a dynamic form of empirical philosophy, Hawking merely made a statement relevant to philosophical speculation in Scientific Philosophy. According to his interpretation of scientific events, God is not necessary. At the point where we shift our perspective back to our reality in which Scientific Philosophy has emerged, we are in our University-based society with multiple philosophical epistemologies.

"Do I want to take my girlfriend, wife, or husband out to dinner at that organic Fair Trade restaurant, study some anger management, socially responsible investment, or go to yoga class or church? Beer or wine is optional and discretionary."

The Laws of Nature which make Scientific Philosophy so cocksure are what exactly? They some unseen factor of the Universe that we perceive through Philosophy, not instruments. And that´s where God´s being unseen is as important to understand as the Laws of Nature. Where did they come from anyway? That´s beyond the late Hawkings´ grasp. He just didn´t get the fact that Physics is not its object of study. It is a form of philosophy that allows humans like him to study the objects that it does.