Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed to Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet (Privileged Species Series)

Denton, author of the groundbreaking  Evolution: A Theory In Crisis  and  Nature's Destiny  returns with this brief, but fascinating, look at what fire tells us about our place in the universe. We take fire for granted, yet it is the basis for our technology. For fire to exist, our world must be fine-tuned — and humans must also be so to use it. Chance cannot produce all that is needed for fire to exist, what fuels it and the humans that wield it. This is an accessible and fascinating book of science that points to a small part of our existence, showing we were no accident. See also  Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home  and  Why the Universe Is the Way It Is .

Amazing read as it shows not only was Earth "set up" for humans to master fire and use it for refining metals and other such things, but that humans themselves were equally "set up" for the purpose of changing the earth and subduing it. Once again, it shows that looking at humanity's arrival on earth as just an accident may be very far from the truth, as indeed it is. I would recommend this for high school students as they set out for college where accidental evolution is assumed, not just taught. Here is evidence to the contrary. A good read, pitched at the non-scientist.

Fire is not something extraneous to life to which organisms must adapt, it is something that has emerged out of the nature of life on Earth.

I highly recommend this book. It approaches life from an intelligent design perspective, and shows how the way we humans were created is important and makes sense as far as our development and purposes for living on Earth. A companion book and the second in the series, The Wonder of Water, does the same thing, also showing how Earth and the people who live on it are privileged and special, and not just random consequences of random mutations. This is definitely a book for anyone seeking to understand why we are here on Earth.

Denton is always fascinating, and this is a strong defense of a fascinating thesis: that the cosmos is somehow set up for human beings to develop and produce the technology we need to explore it. I give it four instead of five stars because there is little here that can't be found in his larger volumes.

This a short book that looks at the science of fire and fire making by human beings. The fine tuning of nature, and of human beings that is required to have and be able to exploit fire is simply astounding. After reading this book you will never think this all happened by series of accidents ever again.

Denton is one of the best and clearest science writers around. His three books could have been consolidated into one volume, but each book [Fire, Water, Light] stands alone unfailingly. A slim volume packed with information!

This was a quick, fun, and thought-provoking read. It also contains (in a far less repetitive manner) some of the key components of Geoffrey West's book, "Scale" (2017).

Did you hear the one about the guy who put a message in a bottle and threw it in the sea in Australia, then 2 years later, his Mum-in-law pulled out that very bottle from the sea at the bottom of her garden ? Yes - then she threw it back in and her daughter found it a year later as she was beach-combing in Brazil !No, I wouldn't believe that either. Fire-Maker is about exactly that: how many coincidences would you believe in before you would say, 'That's just not credible!' Michael Denton analyses all the 'coincidences' which have had to happen before the human race has been able to harness fire and go on to make pottery, develop charcoal (for smelting metals), take copper and iron out of the rocks, used metals to tame electricity, bringing us into the 20th and 21st Century technology from which we benefit.Because it didn't have to happen this way. All of our technology depends on the way humans have been able to use fire. Denton does an excellent job of demonstrating that the Earth and its atmosphere had to be the right size and composition (in complicated ways) before fire would exist at a level which makes it manageable; how only charcoal (presumably a chance discovery) can create the great heat needed to release metals from their ores; how there happens to be a huge supply of this perfect fuel all around us; how the particular qualities of wood make it so suitable for the job; how humans are the only creatures on Earth who could conceivably harness fire due to our size, manual dexterity, intelligence and creativity... In short, we have a string - even longer than I indicate here - of the 'coincidences' it has taken to get humanity out of the Stone Age. You need to read this short book for yourself.The conclusion? The odds are absolutely immense against all these things happening by chance in the physics, chemistry, geology and biology of our planet. Forget the Multiverse. Forget other worlds. You would need phenomenal faith to believe that random processes have all just stumbled on each of these perfect conditions. No, the evidence for the fine-tuning of the Earth to suit the arrival of intelligent life - ourselves - cannot be explained away. Now the advent and use of fire is a new front in the conflict between materialism and faith. Either there is an Intelligent Designer (I even know His name) - or else we are left with an inconceivably long list of lucky breaks which have made the harnessing of fire - and all of modern technology - possible.

Das Buch folgt dem Urschema christlicher ID Denker: Gott persönlich hat die Welt erschaffen und jetzt schauen wir mal wie wir das beweisen können. Ist natürlich erlaubt, die Darwindogmatiker machen‘s auch nicht anders. Mir persönlich aber zu verkrampft.