NvC-1: What is the premise of Naturalism in Biology?

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I just published my eBook and paperback Darwinian-Naturalism is Pseudoscience on Amazon KDP in late March and late April 2020, respectively. The reason I did not mention this in my Message(11) of Topic: The opponent of Creationism is Naturalism not Evolution is because I worried that the participants may raise fewer questions if they read my book. I hope more questions will come up so that all participants will be more interested in the discussion/debate.

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So you wrote a book to beat on a strawman. That is hardly encouraging news.

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I submitted only one biological paper, The Genetic Code was Designed. As the paper’s conclusion leads to creationism, this paper was rejected by the editors of ten journals, as I expected. I mentioned this in Section 4 of Chapter 8 of my book as an example of how Neo-Darwinists suppress different voices.

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Since I can see that your arguments here are badly wrong it’s hardly surprising that your manuscript failed to pass peer review.There is no need to try and blame others for your own failings.

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Before I started to self-learn biology at the late 2015, I had reached all the conclusions

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That is not surprising. It is disappointing. But then you seem to know even less about philosophy, despite choosing to focus more on philosophy than science,So I guess it’s the usual story. An outsider to the field assumes that they know better than the experts and gets angry when their work gets deservedly dismissed. In their anger they invent fantasies where it’s all the experts fault and not theirs. There really isn’t much more to it.Edited by PaulK, : Fixed two little typos (one an auto correction)

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Here's a link to Richard's book at Amazon: Darwinian-Naturalism is Pseudoscience. It's free on Kindle.

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It shows as $12:48 for me. Possibly because I’m outside the US. And it has no reviews. At all.

And we don’t have to read far to see that my earlier assessment of Richard was understated.Reading between the lines Richard’s argument against random mutation failed because he hadn’t bothered to understand how the word random was being used. This doesn’t mean that Richard was ignorantly wrong, oh no. The (Neo-)Darwinists are guilty of academic fraud, as bad as falsifying data.And that’s the opening two paragraphs (where the second is just a one-sentence accusation).

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So far, our discussion on the two topics — The Opponent of Creationism and this NvC-1 topic — concluded that Life consists only of matter is the premise of Neo-Darwinian-Naturalism...

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We have NOT concluded any such thing. We certainly have not concluded that it is a premise. Indeed if it is taken as the rejection of genetic information in every cell (or the fact that humans have language, memory, knowledge etc.) as you would have it in your NvC-3 topic then it has not even been discussed and would be firmly rejected if it was.Let us note, for instance that Richard Dawkins is noted as a champion of the gene-centric view of evolution, which is hardly compatible with rejecting the concept of genetic information.So at this point I must oppose the promotion of NvC-3 as it stands because it rests on an appalling equivocation. Either the claims must be discussed here or NvC-3 must be replaced by something that deals with real differences between the positions under discussion.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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The mainstream biology claims that all biological processes follow the natural laws. On the other hand, I think that the non-material elements in organisms don’t follow the natural laws, so the biological processes related to non-material elements don’t follow the natural laws.

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That is definitely a philosophical topic, not a scientific one. Information, as you have it, is definitely an abstract object and the nature of abstracts is one that philosophers have argued over for millennia. See this article for some discussion of the matter: platonism

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so the biological processes related to non-material elements don’t follow the natural laws.

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Are there any such biological processes ? And if there are, wouldn’t they be founded on material elements and would therefore follow the natural laws for that reason. (I suspect that you fail to understand the concept of supervenience given your contradictory claims in your NvC-2 proposal)I agree with restricting the discussion to genetic information since that is much better understood than the other things that you list.

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As for the biological processes related to non-material elements don’t follow the natural laws, consider an example, 1+1=2 can be operated by electronic circuits in calculators or smartphones and biological circuits in our brains. If only the natural laws play roles, can calculators, smartphones or our brains perform this operation? For reference only, let’s discuss it later.

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It seems to me that calculators can perform the operation and they do so because their components do follow natural law. Calculators are technology, not magic and technology relies on natural laws. Cellphones are more complex but they, too operate entirely according to natural law.Indeed, carrying out addition through electronics is well understood:Consider a simpler device, a player piano. You can wave a piece of sheet music at it all you like, it won’t make any difference. But if you supply the music in the form of a roll designed for that model of player piano, install it correctly and provide power, it will play the music. But it does so because the physical roll interacts with the components of the piano, according to natural law.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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In the recent coronavirus pandemic, the analyses of the structures and variation of the covid-19 coronavirus RNA and the relationship with other coronavirus RNA occupy the center position in fighting against covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. All these subjects are included in empirical science, not abstract philosophy.

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Yes, naturalistic science functions perfectly well in this instance without any need for your philosophy. That is not exactly helpful to your argument.

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When designing/making player piano, do only natural laws play a role?

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Now you are really getting into unanswered questions, and abandoning your claim that you were only going to talk about genetic information, too. I think that the question of consciousness is really going beyond the topic and too far into speculation.Nevertheless, the player piano, like the cell phone, like the calculator functions according to natural law - and relies on natural law to function.

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Therefore, I’ll discuss genetic information in detail, because the processes of genetic information are essentially understood.

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Certainly they are better understood. But again, that’s where your ideas run into trouble,

It would help if he asked a question that can’t be trivially answered with a yes.Natural processes follow natural law. If there are supernatural processes they aren’t part of biology.He also hasn’t grasped the significance of the player piano. Information in itself does nothing (it’s an abstract object, they don’t do anything). In the case of genes it’s much the same - everything is done by the interaction of the chemical structure of the DNA and it’s immediate environment. All according to natural law.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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It does appear to me that this view does make sense of our world in so many ways.

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It doesn’t even make sense: Relational and dispositional properties don’t need meaning. So, no there doesn’t have to be anything in the universe to give them meaning.

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1. Gene contains information about how to make the right protein;
2. Gene information is used for communication: DNA instructs ribosome to synthesize the right protein through mRNA;
3. The communication follows the rule — The Genetic Code;
4. It is clear that the bioinformatic process — translation — obeys the Genetic Code, not the natural laws.

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The translation obeys natural laws. It is a purely chemical process - the abstract information does nothing, it is the actual chemical sequence and it’s interaction with the other chemicals surrounding it that does the work. All according to natural law.

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Frankly, I really don’t know how to answer.

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It’s not that different from the example of the player piano. In each case the information is in a form that will produce a particular result when provided in the correct way - through the action of physical law.

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For general concept discussion, I like to take language as an example, because everyone has experience in language.

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Arguing by analogy is all very well, but you have to establish a real analogy.

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Well, according to your logic, in writing your message, it is a purely chemical process, the abstract information — your knowledge of English, English vocabulary and grammar, and your idea on this message — does nothing!

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My logic is based on a basic knowledge of how DNA is transcribed and processed. If you have similar knowledge of how language operates and it tells you that your statement is true then that is your assertion. If you lack such knowledge you are certainly not following MY logic at all.To add a clarification. For the purposes of this discussion I am not going to go into how the mind operates at all. However, it is a fact that the abstract information plays no role - it is the physical representation of that information interacting with my senses and my mind that does the job. Give me a copy of Hamlet written in Chinese or recorded onto an 8 floppy disk and I won’t be able to read either. It must be in a physical form that I can comprehend.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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English obeys its vocabulary and grammar, not the natural laws; Fun
Gene obeys the Genetic Code, not the natural laws.
Are these conclusions terrible non sequitur? What’s your logic?

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They are certainly terrible.You have to follow the rules of vocabulary and grammar to write correct English, but the information doesn’t have to obey those laws. The information can exist in other forms than written English. You can even communicate it with incorrect English. Many spelling mistakes, for instance, can be easily glossed over - indeed, standardised spelling is itself a relatively recent addition.Likewise the genetic code merely describes how the genes are interpreted - and that interpretation is carried out by chemistry which follows natural law. It is not something that genes obey. How could they?

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The question is where is the genetic information? The process is called as TRANSLATION, can natural laws translate genetic information into protein information? Have you guys thought about it

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You have already agreed that the answer to the sensible interpretation of that question is yes - since the translation process obeys natural law.

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If you input numbers 3 and 2 into a calculator. The results for the operations +, -, * and / are 5, 1, 6 and 1.5, respectively. No matter what operation the calculator does, every step follows natural laws. Why are the results different? Because electronic signals go through different electronic circuits for different operations. Therefore, the math operation rules embodied in the electronic circuits or electronic devices. The electronic devices of these math operations are designed according to the math operation rules, rather than natural laws. Therefore, math operations follow the math operation rules, not natural laws. No one can get 3+2=5 from natural laws.

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Of course the circuits are designed according to natural law, otherwise they wouldn’t work.The more accurate description is that the mathematical operations supervene on the physical operations. There is no violation of natural law.Of course, DNA is different in a significant way - the chemistry is everything. There is no associated meaning beyond the chemical. There is a translation within the realm of chemistry but the outputs are as chemical as the inputs and the machinery (I will note that the diagrams are purely illustrative and bear little resemblance to the actual chemicals).

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This device can be called as DNA-Protein-Translator. If one links the input and output to screen, this device would work exactly as Google Translator: input gene information and translate it into protein structure information. Can natural laws do this?

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I hope that Google Translate can do better. This is closer to a simple substitution cipher than translating natural language - a much, much easier problem. And again, by any sensible interpretation natural laws are doing it. Even the machinery is assembled by natural operations. So long as we stay in the realm of the known that remains true.

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The most important component of the device is tRNA. The Genetic Code is directly reflected in tRNA. As shown in the Figure in Taq(277), the anticodon portion and the amino acid linked portion are located at both ends of the tRNA, respectively. A tRNA contains typically 76-90 nucleotides in length, so the two portions are separated by about 30-40 nucleotides. If only natural laws work, then the anticodon portion is unlikely to affect what type amino acid will be attached for a tRNA.

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I suspect you are trying to apply natural law without understanding the conditions, which is a basic error. There isn’t even an analytical solution for the three-body problem, so to think you can understand what will happen in a complex chemical environment without understanding it is clearly foolish.

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- Why all 61 tRNA (3 codons for STOP removed from the total 64 codons) can only carry one type of amino acid, but not more than one type of amino acid?

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Why is that an important question? I suppose other systems are conceivable but surely we would be getting deeply into unproductive speculation in considering that here.

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- For a tRNA, such as the tRNA in the Figure of Taq(267) with an anticodon UUU, why does it carry Lys instead of other amino acid?

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I don’t see why that is an important question either, for much the same reason.Note also that the answers to both may well involve a degree of historical contingency - from a history that is beyond our knowledge.Again, you are seeking to step beyond the bounds of knowledge, which is certainly not where you want to go if you are trying to make a string scientific case.

Yes. The natural versus supernatural dichotomy shouldn’t be confused with the natural versus artificial. The former is the usual concern here.