The birth of Modern Intelligent Design Theory

"From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 Mev energy level in the nucleus of 12C to the 7.12 Mev level in 16O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? Following the above argument, I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature." (Hoyle, F., "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 20, 1982, pp.1-35, p.16).



"Oxygen and carbon atoms are about equally common in living material, just as they are in the Universe at large. While it is possible to imagine life in a Universe with a moderate imbalance between oxygen and carbon, a really large imbalance would seem to forbid its existence. A great excess of carbon would prevent the formation of many materials on which life is vitally dependent, rock and soil for example, while a great oxygen excess would simply burn up any carbon bearing biochemicals that happened to be around. The necessary balance between oxygen and carbon depends on the details of the origin of the chemical elements by nuclear reactions inside stars, a subject which has been intensively studied over the past three decades, and one which we have already touched on in this book. The details are concerned with how neutrons and protons group together to form the nuclei of atoms. Oxygen and carbon are like two radio receivers, each tuned to a particular wavelength. Unless the tunings are right, with the two dials set at the appropriate wavelengths far more oxygen is produced than carbon. But, as it happens, the tunings are indeed correct, so that oxygen and carbon atoms are produced in the Universe in appropriately balanced amounts. The problem is to decide whether these apparently coincidental tunings are really accidents or not, and therefore whether or not life is accidental. No scientist likes to ask such a question, but it has to be asked for all that. Could it be that the tunings are intelligently deliberate?" (Hoyle, F., "The Intelligent Universe," Michael Joseph: London, 1983, pp.218-219).