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Author Topic:   NvC-1: What is the premise of Naturalism in Biology?
Richard L. Wang
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 104
From: Ottawa, ON, Canada
Joined: 04-27-2020


Message 76 of 452 (875974)
05-10-2020 4:48 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by GDR
05-10-2020 1:35 PM


Re-GDR(64): The opposite of materialism is idealism, I don’t
I don’t agree with materialism or idealism, so I don’t use materialism. I prefer to use Naturalism, which states that all natural phenomena occur naturally and are driven by the natural forces and natural laws, while Creationists say — No, somethings were created.
I have my own creationism, which I mentioned is different from all other creationism. I don’t think it’s a good idea to introduce my creationism all around at once. For example, if it contains ten subtopics, it would be impossible to debate/discussion if I propose all ten subtopics at once. Let’s discuss one subtopic at a time.
Thanks for your post.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 77 by JonF, posted 05-10-2020 5:05 PM Richard L. Wang has not replied
 Message 78 by AZPaul3, posted 05-10-2020 5:10 PM Richard L. Wang has not replied
 Message 79 by jar, posted 05-10-2020 5:15 PM Richard L. Wang has not replied
 Message 86 by PaulK, posted 05-11-2020 1:54 AM Richard L. Wang has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 167 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 77 of 452 (875976)
05-10-2020 5:05 PM
Reply to: Message 76 by Richard L. Wang
05-10-2020 4:48 PM


Re: Re-GDR(64): The opposite of materialism is idealism, I don’t
I prefer to use Naturalism, which states that all natural phenomena occur naturally and are driven by the natural forces and natural laws
What you prefer doesn't matter. What is reality does.
Reality is that science doesn't use naturalism as you define it, so any argument you make based on your definition of naturalism is fatally flawed. The appropriate term is "methodological naturalism".
But you have been told many times why your definition isn't appropriate for this discussion. With no reaction from you.
Are you really incapable of learning?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 76 by Richard L. Wang, posted 05-10-2020 4:48 PM Richard L. Wang has not replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 78 of 452 (875977)
05-10-2020 5:10 PM
Reply to: Message 76 by Richard L. Wang
05-10-2020 4:48 PM


Re: Re-GDR(64): The opposite of materialism is idealism, I don’t
I don’t think it’s a good idea to introduce my creationism all around at once.
Unless we know what we are talking about there is no utility in this discussion.
You say evolution is wrong because you have your own pet definition of evolution.
What bullshit!
We are not the simpletons you creationists are used to associating with in your own communities. We know how to handle complexity and your insult is rejected. If you insist on a custom definition of a concept with an already well established definition then you damn well better put it up here ... all of it ... now.
If we can swamp through a RAZD post on age correlation we can handle anything.
*** Admin: This is too much crap. I suggest Richard's pending thread on his information BS be held in abeyance until the questions raised in this present thread are addressed.
Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Factio Republicana delenda est.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 76 by Richard L. Wang, posted 05-10-2020 4:48 PM Richard L. Wang has not replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 79 of 452 (875978)
05-10-2020 5:15 PM
Reply to: Message 76 by Richard L. Wang
05-10-2020 4:48 PM


Re: Re-GDR(64): The opposite of materialism is idealism, I don’t
the Preacher Man writes:
I prefer to use Naturalism, which states that all natural phenomena occur naturally and are driven by the natural forces and natural laws, while Creationists say — No, somethings were created.
Once again, little words just for you.
There is evidence of Natural Things and Natural Processes.
There is no evidence of Supernatural Things or Supernatural Processes.
Until you present the evidence of Supernatural Things or Supernatural Processes you are just posting Word Salad.
It really is that simple.
YOU have nothing to offer it seems. Classic CCoI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My Sister's Website: Rose Hill StudiosMy Website: My Website

This message is a reply to:
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Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 80 of 452 (875979)
05-10-2020 5:41 PM
Reply to: Message 66 by WookieeB
05-10-2020 2:58 PM


Wookie writes:
But what is your question?
I/we don't have a question, we have a statement; the statement is that science has only observed natural processes so it has a fairly hard but necessarily provisional conclusion that natural processes are all there are. This position is not confined to biology nor the portion of it called evolution, nor his imaginary subdivision that he has a personal name for, but all of science.
That is not a premise, that is a conclusion based on innumerable observations.
Given those facts our OP's 'premise' is defunct. Unless he addresses this impasse he can't progress on his rehearsed, blinkered schedule.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 81 of 452 (875981)
05-10-2020 9:46 PM
Reply to: Message 74 by WookieeB
05-10-2020 4:42 PM


Identifying the supernatural
As indicated, supernatural is not-natural. If science is limited to the testing and observation of natural things (matter and energy), then by that definition, the testing and observational techniques cannot be used to validate or negate anything supernatural ...
But it is a premise. You limit your testing to natural things only, do not have any tests outside of natural processes, and thus you cannot, by definition, have any other conclusions beyond something natural.
But this isn't so. Think of any miracle in the Bible let's say the bush in Exodus that "burned with fire, and was not consumed". Scientifically we could verify that there were indeed flames, and that the bush was not being consumed. And science would tell us that this was a a miracle, being a local violation of the laws of nature.
Indeed, the more scientific we are, the more clearly we can perceive this. Someone who didn't know very much about fire might think, "yes, it's an oddity, but is it a miracle"? He might class it with other oddities like Old Faithful or an eclipse of the sun. But our scientific knowledge of fire would make us absolutely certain that we were in the presence of the supernatural. It is exactly scientific knowledge knowledge of the natural order of things that would allow us to detect the supernatural a violation of that order.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 74 by WookieeB, posted 05-10-2020 4:42 PM WookieeB has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 82 of 452 (875982)
05-10-2020 10:30 PM
Reply to: Message 81 by Dr Adequate
05-10-2020 9:46 PM


Re: Finding the supernatural
Someone who didn't know very much about fire might think, "yes, it's an oddity, but is it a miracle"? He might class it with other oddities like Old Faithful or an eclipse of the sun. But our scientific knowledge of fire would make us absolutely certain that we were in the presence of the supernatural. It is exactly scientific knowledge knowledge of the natural order of things that would allow us to detect the supernatural a violation of that order.
And as part of knowing about fire, you would also need to know about -- or at least be able to think through -- situations which may appear to violate the natural order while not actually doing so.
An example if I may. An old-ish Boy Scout trick. What happens when you put a paper cup into the campfire. It burns up. Put water in a paper cup and place it in the fire. It doesn't burn up. That violates what you know about the natural order of paper cups and fire. A miracle!
Until you realize that the heat going into the paper cup is actually going into heating up the water, so that cup-water system never gets hot enough to reach the kindling point of the cup until the water has boiled away. But to realize that, you need to know a lot about fire and how things catch on fire. "Common sense" knowledge about fire is insufficient and could lead you astray.
For example the "burning bush". I think that few people realize that a candle wick isn't what's burning, but rather it's the wax under the wick that's being drawn up (ie, "wicked up" through wicking action) and being burned. The only part of the wick that does eventually burn is the part that the melted wax can no longer get to. So then some illusionist could construct a "burning bush" trick in which the bush serve to transport the flammable (or inflammable) material for the fire leaving the bush itself unconsumed by the flames.
There have been countless generations of countless professionals whose job it is and has been to produce such miracles on command every day of the week and twice on Saturdays (same schedule as Captain America socking Hitler on the jaw -- how many people caught that throw-away, especially considering what was depicted on the cover of the very first Captain America comic, March 1941?). All without ever actually having to resort to using the supernatural. Id est, all by natural means.
So then the criterion for determining that the supernatural was at play is not just that you country bumpkins can't figure it out (hey, I once saw with my own eyes in a cruise ship magic act the guy draw a bowling ball on a sketch pad and an actual bowling ball with appropriate gravitas (or at least gravity) drop out of it to the stage floor -- now try to explain that without resorting to God!). Rather, we must first thoroughly exhaust all possible natural explanations. As one of my signatures here quotes Sherlock Holmes ("The Hound of the Baskervilles"):
quote:
Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
ABE:
Or was it my high school chemistry teacher who put a paper cup filled with water over a Bunsen burner? And we duplicated that experiment once at a campout?
Edited by dwise1, : ABE: Or was that in high school chemistry class?
Edited by dwise1, : bowling ball
Edited by dwise1, : "without resorting to God"

This message is a reply to:
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AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 83 of 452 (875983)
05-10-2020 10:54 PM
Reply to: Message 74 by WookieeB
05-10-2020 4:42 PM


If science is limited to the testing and observation of natural things (matter and energy), then by that definition, the testing and observational techniques cannot be used to validate or negate anything supernatural,
Naturalism deals with natural materials operated by natural processes but SCIENCE is not so limited. Except those things that have no effect on anything in this universe, those things that cannot interact or move or change anything in this universe, there is nothing outside the grasp of science.
... like "Non-physical or quasi-physical substance, such as information, ideas, values, logic, mathematics, intellect, and other emergent phenomena."
These are all natural human constructs with many overlapping fields of scientific study dedicated to them. You have a problem with Claude Shannon and John Conway? Do you seriously believe that complex chaotic systems like psychology, economics and sociology are not scrutinized in their studies and conclusions in the most classical scientific ways under peer review by those in the field?
There is nothing in this universe, nothing that can impact this universe, nothing that can in any way be a part of this universe that, given the opportunity to study, we can not science the hell out of.
Since all our science has ever seen is natural things doing natural things Naturalism is a conclusion of science not its limits. Show us your "supernatural" dog and we will bring him to heel.
Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.
Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Factio Republicana delenda est.

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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 84 of 452 (875984)
05-10-2020 11:26 PM
Reply to: Message 83 by AZPaul3
05-10-2020 10:54 PM


Since all our science has ever seen is natural things doing natural things Naturalism is a conclusion of science not its limits. Show us your "supernatural" dog and we will bring him to heel.
The standard creationist argument is that both camps are dealing with the same data, but just interpreting it differently.
But that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is that the creationists are claiming to have different data. Supernaturalistic data.
In that case, then fine! Let them present their supernaturalistic data!
We welcome it! Put up or shut up!

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 85 of 452 (875985)
05-11-2020 12:12 AM
Reply to: Message 69 by Richard L. Wang
05-10-2020 3:43 PM


Re: Re —RAZD(59): DN represents Neo-Darwinists’ naturalistic explanation
The reason of why I use it is as I told you guys that because I type very slow, I can just type less by using DN to represent Neo-Darwinists’ naturalistic explanation of evolution.
That is not the question. The issue is not your use of acronyms (eg, DN), but rather your horrific redefining of those term to mean something entirely different from their normal definitions.
 
BTW, typing can be a cultural issue, different for different languages as I learned one night.
I learned touch-typing in school around when I was 13. My father told me that he tried the US Navy course, but that involved locking you in a room with a typewriter and an exercise book, but that is how it's learned. We drilled on the home keys, repeatedly typing the same single letters (BTW, that's the reason for the bit of embossing on the F and J keys, so that you can feel where to place your index fingers to put on the home keys). Then going up and down and inwards from those home keys. Then two-letter words in English, then three-letter words, then the most common four-letter words, etc. Until we could spell out uncommon words, but then just rip through the common ones. There was a pattern developing there that we never saw.
About seven years later in college, I had a German assignment to hand in, so I decided to type it (there's a longer story to that that's not really relevant). So I started typing in German for the first time in my life. I couldn't understand why I had to spell every single word out letter for letter, even the most common ones (like the eight different forms of "the" or "a"). But then as I progressed through that evolution I realized that more and more of the more common German words were being incorporated into my "muscle memory." That is the moment that I realized the real purpose of all those keyboard exercises: to implant the most common words into our muscle memory so that we can just type them out at sight without having to think them through.
But Chinese typing is very different -- warning and apologies, but most of my knowledge of Chinese writing is through Japanese Kanji. In Kanji, every symbol is a separate idea or object. The advantage is that one writing system can support any number of spoken languages. The disadvantage is that you cannot read out what's written in another language, but rather you must rely on writing in order to communicate.
I only have two exposures to Chinese/Kanji keyboards. One was a James Bond movie where he teams up with a Chinese agent (female, of course -- "Tomorrow Never Dies"). They need to hack into a computer and he wants to do it, but the keyboard is in Chinese so she does it instead. After that, I spoke with a Chinese colleague and he confirmed that there are several mode keys which change the character generated by pressing any particular key. Which would make typing on a Chinese keyboard even more complex and probably not very conducive to touch-typing.
The other example was a Japanese TV series set in WWII that I saw on German TV in the 1970's. In the background of one scene there was a Japanese typewriter, mechanical, of course. It looked like an old style cash register, but it was enormous and dwarfed the furniture in the room. It was about 5 or 6 feet wide and 2 or 3 feet across in a curve with I could not even begin to imagine how many keys it had for individual Kanji characters.
I have a Kanji reference book with the first 888 characters that elementary school children must learn, but it says that you must know at least 1,200 characters in order to read a newspaper. Now just imagine having to try to reduce that down to a computer keyboard.
Mind blown.
Edited by dwise1, : minor tweaks, no deletions and minor additions

This message is a reply to:
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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 86 of 452 (875987)
05-11-2020 1:54 AM
Reply to: Message 76 by Richard L. Wang
05-10-2020 4:48 PM


Re: Re-GDR(64): The opposite of materialism is idealism, I don’t
I’m going to comment that the first thread seems to be your ideas about the opposing position. Which are mainly your invention. That’s superfluous at best.
I’ll also ask right now what your proposed non-natural aspect of life actually is. Because if it’s information you aren’t actually disagreeing with a naturalist position yet (and I include what you’ve written in the second thread).

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Admin
Director
Posts: 12995
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 87 of 452 (876013)
05-11-2020 4:36 PM
Reply to: Message 74 by WookieeB
05-10-2020 4:42 PM


I don't know if you realized it, but you replied to Dr Adequate's Message 65 but quoted from RAZD's Message 11.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 74 by WookieeB, posted 05-10-2020 4:42 PM WookieeB has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 89 by WookieeB, posted 05-11-2020 4:42 PM Admin has replied

  
WookieeB
Member
Posts: 190
Joined: 01-18-2019


Message 88 of 452 (876015)
05-11-2020 4:40 PM
Reply to: Message 84 by dwise1
05-10-2020 11:26 PM


The standard creationist argument is that both camps are dealing with the same data, but just interpreting it differently.
But that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is that the creationists are claiming to have different data. Supernaturalistic data.
In that case, then fine! Let them present their supernaturalistic data!
We welcome it! Put up or shut up!
And this, dear reader, is the perfect example of a strawman.

This message is a reply to:
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WookieeB
Member
Posts: 190
Joined: 01-18-2019


Message 89 of 452 (876016)
05-11-2020 4:42 PM
Reply to: Message 87 by Admin
05-11-2020 4:36 PM


Admin writes:
I don't know if you realized it, but you replied to Dr Adequate's Message 65 but quoted from RAZD's Message 11.
I hope you realize I was responding to both. I quoted from both and initially put their names in the quoted sections.
Edited by WookieeB, : No reason given.

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 Message 87 by Admin, posted 05-11-2020 4:36 PM Admin has replied

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Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


(1)
Message 90 of 452 (876017)
05-11-2020 4:45 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by Richard L. Wang
05-08-2020 4:08 PM


Re: Re — 28/40(Stile) & 24(JonF)&36(Tangle)&39(AZPaul3)
Richard L. Wang writes:
You call life consists only of matter a tentatively held conclusion.
That's right, I do.
JonF calls it a strong conclusion.
Sure - why not?
Strong conclusions are still tentatively held. Just like Gravity.
Tangle calls it The concept of naturalism in science is a conclusion not a premise.
Okay - sounds like more agreement.
AZPaul3 calls it *a* premise based on observation.
A conclusion based on observation can be used as a premise for another idea. Why not?
Something can easily be both a tentatively held conclusion and a premise.
It doesn't remove the fact that if additional information/observations come along - the conclusion (and premise) will be changed.
...which is still diametrically opposed to your idea of an axiomatic premise "just because."
This is the most important conclusion of DN. In addition, you can emphasize that this is a conclusion based on evidence.
Okay.
For me, I call it premise and I question its correctness. We will discuss the issue soon, which is the core in our discussion.
You seem to imply it's an axiomatic premise - which is very wrong and contextually opposite to how it should be understood.
Why promote confusion?
Are you afraid of honesty?
Questioning it's correctness is good, though.
But Science already beat you to this - all conclusions, premises, data... everything in Science is always constantly questioned on it's correctness.
It's the strength of Science.
At present, the most important thing is that we all recognize that life consists only of matter directly leads to only natural laws operate in biological processes.
I don't see how that holds.
And Science certainly doesn't make such a "link."
Science may conclude that only natural laws operate in biological process and that life consists of only matter...
...but these would be tentatively held conclusions based on observation... not based on any "logical connection."
...and the moment any observations surface that contradict these conclusions; Science will update it's position - as it always does.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by Richard L. Wang, posted 05-08-2020 4:08 PM Richard L. Wang has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 127 by Richard L. Wang, posted 05-18-2020 4:47 PM Stile has replied

  
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