Stephen Hawking is dead ...

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dawkins may be a good biologist but when he starts giving lectures about the lack of evidence of a Creator he becomes disingenuous at best.

His arguments against one of the implications of the fine tunings of the physical constants of our universe are disingenuous (based on the videos of his lectures on college campuses.)
Dawkins does not belong in the same thread as Hawking. (I am happy to discuss the weakness of some of Dawkins arguments on another thread.)

Hawking deserves respect in my opinion.

Certainly free to disagree with Dawkins, he's controversial on purpose. My point was simply to point out the conflation with Hawking, who as you pointed out is widely respected. Probably as much for his ability to simplify complex physics to layman format in his books as his theoretical contributions. Which are also significant despite not being "proven", which only a complete non-scientist ignoramus would harp on given how science works (large parts of the theory of gravity remain "unproven", big parts of particle theory used to build the semiconductor's used by said moron to post remain "unproven", hell pretty much anything cutting edge in science is "unproven" pretty much by definition!) Only a complete asshat would go on a rant about Hawkings upon his death, especially given that he's clearly contributed absolutely nothing to science ever since he doesn't even understand the basics of the scientific method. Either that or someone who got him confused with Dawkins. Or both in this case.