The scientific method is the best way we have to understand the universe?

Sara Passmore who is the president of the Humanist Society of New Zealand says:

The scientific method is the best way we have to understand the universe.

I often hear people say this, especially scientists.  The problem here is that the word "understand" in this context is ambiguous.

Let's consider an analogy. Is the best way to understand a computer game to play it?

Well, it depends what is meant by "understand". By playing it we come more proficient at the game, we can predict more readily what will happen when one's character carries out certain actions. But no matter how often we play the game, one will never understand why the game has the particular characteristics it has, nor why it exists in the first place.

Likewise with science.  The purpose of science is to map out the patterns discerned in reality and calculate how the world changes with particular actions on our parts.  But that's all it does.  Science tells us nothing about the underlying machinery of reality. It tells us nothing about how or why the world exists at all and why it has the particular physical laws it does. That is what metaphysics deals with.

So, when people say "the scientific method is the best way we have to understand the universe", do they simply mean "understand" as in the patterns we discern in reality and the way they change? I don't think so, because often people who say this are atheists and seem to be insinuating that science offers an alternative explanation to "God" as to why there is a Universe at all, and why we exist etc.  And this includes prominent scientists like the late Stephen Hawking, who really should know better.

Stephen Hawking continues to demonstrate his philosophical cluelessness

God did not create the universe, says Stephen Hawking

Article says:

"God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was the inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, says eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking".

Either physical laws:

a) Merely describe what happens.
b) They make things happen.

If "a" then the Big Bang wasn't caused by physical laws. For that would be like saying sleep is caused by sleeping pills via their soporific effect. So in this case we have no explanation for why the Big Bang occurred, nor indeed anything after the Big Bang.

If "b" then why do physical laws exist? Did they somehow acausally spring into being? Or perhaps they were brought into being by something else, some conscious agent? If that's not possible then why isn't it? What's the alternative explanation?

It would be helpful if physicist tried to understand that science merely describes reality.  See my own:
Do scientific explanations actually explain?

The true nature of reality

It's quite likely to be a mistake to suppose science is discovering the true nature of reality. Scientific theories most probably do not depict how things really are. Contrary to what scientists think eg Hawkings, Dawkins, Krauss et al, it's not truth that science is striving for, but rather improved engineering.

However it's important that scientists do not understand this and think they are revealing the true nature of reality. That gives them the psychological drive to invent new scientific theories. It is a noble lie.