The second in a pair of excellent books by geneticist Michael Denton has just been released, and both are very much worth reading. The first was titled Fire-maker, and the second, just-released work, is titled The Wonder of Water. A non-scientist would have no trouble following and understanding either book.
Each of them provides the reader with fascinating information on almost every page as they examine two commonplace phenomena in our environment, fire and water, and explain that if those two phenomena didn't have precisely the properties they do, life would be either very much diminished, or even impossible.Certainly living things as complex as human beings would be impossible.
In Fire-maker, for example, Denton reflects upon all the properties of planet earth that have to be just right for the phenomenon of fire to exist and then recounts all the physical characteristics of an animal such as human beings that have to be just as they are for that animal to be able to use fire. He then examines what that animal's culture would be like were the animal or the earth even slightly different such that fire could not be made or harnessed. It all just leaves one shaking one's head in amazement.
Here are a couple of related videos that'll give you an idea of what the books are about:
The more we learn about the world in which we live the harder it is to think that it's all just a marvelous coincidence that everything has just the properties it does.
For those who may have a stronger background in science and wish to probe more deeply into these matters, I recommend Denton's earlier book Nature's Destiny.
