Sy Garte

“I had reached a number of stop signs in trying to understand the universe using rational logic and science alone. My questions were not being answered, and I could drive no further along the path I was now determined to follow. I had to leave that trusty old car behind and proceed on foot through what seemed to me at the time to be an impenetrable jungle of irrational ideas, superstitions, delusions, and wishful thinking. I stood there under that stop sign for a long time, not knowing what to do, and I would still be there if God had not shown me the way. But He did.”
― Sy Garte, The Works of His Hands: A Scientist’s Journey from Atheism to Faith

“The fraction of the mass of two hydrogen atoms that is released as energy when they fuse to produce helium is 0.007 (0.7%). That is the source of the heat produced in the sun and in a hydrogen bomb.
It is the amount of mass (m) that is converted to energy (E) in the famous Einstein formula E = mc2, and it is a direct measure of the
strong nuclear force. If the strong force had a value of 0.006 or less, the universe would consist only of hydrogen—not very conducive
to the complexities of life. If the value were greater than 0.008, all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang, and there could be no stars, no solar heat—again, no life.
As Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put it in their book The Grand Design, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a
design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.”
― Sy Garte, The Works of His Hands: A Scientist’s Journey from Atheism to Faith