It would be simpler to refute Hawking by noting a scientist shouldn’t confuse opinion with data. Physics cannot speak to the time before the Big Bang because there is no data. You can’t measure the physical universe when there is no physical universe to measure. Without data you can’t prove one approach or disprove another. This places Hawking in the arena of philosophy - not science. And as a philosopher I don’t see Hawking as entitled to more weight then others.
Hawking could simply have said as a matter of Occam’s razor, it’s more reasonable to conceive a universe arising from “nothing” then a supreme all knowing all powerful sentiment being arising from “nothing” who THEN creates the physical universe. And let it go at that without making such absolutist and unprovable statements as to what “did” occur. But he didn’t.
The physicist says the notions of time and space, before the big bang, have no meaning. There was no space, there was no time. Same conditions exist inside a black hole.
The "empty space" that we occupy can give rise to all sorts of weird events, including particle creation - but that "empty" space is limited to the volume of the universe.