Yesterday we released the monograph Fire-Maker by Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton and, today, the 21-minute YouTube documentary of the same name, written and directed by John West and focusing on Denton’s research:

Of course books and films do different things, which is why you need both. The book, while brief, goes into more detail on the science, but the documentary couldn’t be more accessible. It’s truly for all audiences, revealing how our planet and anatomy are “uniquely fit” for the use of fire, the “root” discovery behind the rise of civilization.

I mentioned earlier that it’s an as-if-by-design piece of good fortune that Denton’s little book appears a week after the release of Tom Wolfe’s Kingdom of Speech. Here’s a further interesting coincidence. As I’ve pointed out, Wolfe should meet Denton sometime. Another cultural icon who should get to know Dr. Denton is the legendary filmmaker Terrence Malick.

By lucky chance, Malick’s own forthcoming documentary, Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, had its premiere this week at the Venice Film Festival. The idea of cosmic design is prominent in Malick’s typically lush (and expensive) work. Judging from the trailer, Voyage of Time and Fire-Maker share some themes and settings — planets from space, desert tribesmen, all with an evocative soundtrack. Both present a picture of biology and cosmology suggestive of profound purpose.

As predicted here, the Malick film is being associated with intelligent design. It sounds like a piece of breathtaking cinematographic art, but also comes in for some criticism for being a little over-mystical and a bit heavy on “woo.”

From the review in Variety:

You might say that Malick’s philosophy in “Voyage of Time” is a version of “intelligent design,” yet somehow that phrase sells it short. He sees God’s touch in the glory and strangeness of every natural surface — a flower of extraordinary delicacy whose outer petals look like a wedding dress and whose inner petals look like shark’s teeth, or jellyfish pulsating with such diaphanous synchronization that we can’t help but have the feeling that there’s something purposeful about them. The message of the images in “Voyage of Time” is that if you’re searching for God, you need do little more than cast your eye over everything on earth.

The film’s narration, unfortunately, is of a less intelligent design. It’s meant to be incantatory, a poem of sacramental inquiry, with [Cate] Blanchett speaking to the higher power of nature, to the very spirit of life, whom she personifies as “Mother” (how’s that for ancient and post-feminist at the same time?), asking Her questions that have no answer: “Who are you, life giver? Light bringer?” A little of this goes a long way, especially when, half an hour later, Blanchett is still at it, saying things like “All life. Giver of good. Creating yourself. In ever-changing shapes. You give. Without asking.”

The review praises Malick for advancing a “truce” between “Creationists and those who believe in evolutionary science” — which sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? — but also slightly patronizes him as a “New Age Christian sentimentalist.” The reviewer wishes for a “nature movie whose final effect is an honest ‘Wow!’ rather than a semi-enraptured ‘Hmmm.'”

The genius of Fire-Maker is that, in focusing on this one critical human innovation with mystical resonances, it is wholly scientific, uplifting but not “semi-enraptured,” “sentimental,” or “New Age” at all. Denton’s argument is factual and objective.

As the narrator says, “In order for our planet to fully realize the life-giving powers of fire, a multitude of precise and exacting conditions had to be met.” Those conditions include Earth’s planetary size and atmosphere, man’s body size and terrestrial, android design, with muscles strong enough, nerves fast enough, hands dexterous enough, plus ample fuel in the form of large woody plants, abundant material for metallurgy (notably iron and copper), and more.

Take any of it away and that new iPhone 7, also released today, would be impossible. We take it all for granted but in fact the conditions are highly exacting. We and our planet are “uniquely fit” to use fire. Both are ideally designed for it. That is fact, not sentiment.

I mean no disrespect to Mr. Malick. His 2011 fiction film The Tree of Life was a great movie, and the new documentary is said to be reminiscent of its opening sequences. I’ll be among the first in line to see Voyage of Time. No doubt it cost a fortune to make, and that will be evident in every frame. But I venture to say that it’s Fire-Maker that delivers the “honest ‘Wow'” as its “final effect.” See it now.

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