Is There a Cause of the Universe?

"We just have a real disagreement here on bedrock metaphysical principles," says Hawking. "To me, that is a higher intellectual price tag than just saying, for all we know, the scope of the causal principle is simply physical and not metaphysical because the universe is not the kind of thing that could have a cause as we understand causes", he adds. 'I didn't expect to get to a disagreement so quickly,' admits Hawking. "'It's because you and I have radically different intuitions about this' -- it's very interesting."