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

[ I highlighted below what seemed the thread's main topic. --Admin ]According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, naturalism is the "idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world."Now, we focus on biological processes - including the origin and evolution of life -, which are part of the world; and we integrate natural forces into natural laws. So, Naturalism in biology can be expressed as: Naturalism in biology believes that only natural laws operate in biological processes. Therefore, in the Naturalists’ biological world, all biological processes have or will have a plausible explanation based on the natural laws, and God does not exist.From now on, I’ll use (Neo-)Darwinian-Naturalism or DN to represent Naturalism in biology or the Naturalistic explanation of biology.Today, the mainstream science is Naturalism, and the mainstream biology is Darwinian-Naturalism.Here, we discuss about science, we don’t care people’s personal beliefs. I like to simplify things, so I’m not going to talk about methodological naturalism, I don’t like to have many philosophical concepts involved. Let’s just discuss Atheism and Theism in science, not Non-Theism. The question is the DN’s theoretical foundation or premise: what is the reason for DNists to believe that only natural laws operate in biological processes?In a post, I wrote that my creationism is different from all other creationism. As a theoretical physicist, I focus on the DN’s theoretical framework. First, I try to know the DN’s premises, and then I analyze them. I find that the DN’s premises are completely wrong. If the premise of a theoretical system is wrong, the theoretical system collapses completely. Edited by Admin, : Make clear the topic.

Thread copied here from the NvC-1: What is the premise of Naturalism in Biology? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Natural things and processes can be observed and tested.Nothing supernatural can be observed or tested.It really is that simple.

From your Message 11 in the initial thread where you later declared an agreement that didn't exist:

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I’m going to propose a series of topics. The answer for each topic is YES or NO.

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So in this topic what is your YES/NO question? I don't see one.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

I cannot believe that this got promoted while you have yet to address the problems caused by your intent to lie to us in your first topic. Actually, you have explicitly refused to address the issue of your lying.Yet again, you keep defining "Naturalism" as philosophical naturalism, whereas science uses methodological naturalism. You refuse to even recognize methodological naturalism, choosing instead to impose philosophical naturalism on science which is a damned lie!Here you continue your damned lying by imposing your philosophical naturalism on biology in order to force upon biology your damned lie that it states that God does not exist. Biology makes no such statement, you damned liar! Like all of science, biology uses methodological naturalism which uses only naturalistic explanations because that's the only kind of explanation that science can work with and which never takes any kind of position regarding any of the gods. Period!Stop lying about science! Except for the simple facts that science uses methodological naturalism, not your philosophical naturalism, and that science has nothing whatsoever to do with atheism-versus-theism, but rather is non-theistic.So by explicitly and deliberately choosing to eliminate those vital and essential ideas from your discussion, you have chosen to deliberately lie about science!Stop lying about science! Really? Have you? I don't remember seeing that, though I do remember raising with you the fact that there is a wide range of different kinds of creationists, so which kind are you? Where did you write that? Please point us to it. Or is that simply yet another one of your damned lies?So far, you have been demonstrating that you are just yet another lying deceiving creationist. I really wish that that would not be the case, but then you are what you are.Oh, and:Stop lying about science!Stop lying, period!

As others have observed there is no YES/NO question.The other point of interest is that far from avoiding philosophy it is all about philosophy.

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Today, the mainstream science is Naturalism, and the mainstream biology is Darwinian-Naturalism

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Theists can and have operated within mainstream biology, including Theodore Dobzhansky, Kenneth Miller and Simon Conway-Morris. Thus, this point actually refers to methodological naturalism.So, if the question is being asked about mainstream biology it ought to be:What is the justification for practicing methodological naturalism in biology?Which would be a question worth discussing, and in line with the assertion that God is required in scientific interpretation. Unfortunately it would go against the assertion that methodological naturalism and philosophy would not be discussed, but that was already contradicted.If the question is really about why biologists who hold to philosophical Naturalism do so, then it gets into personal philosophies - so we still can’t avoid philosophy - and likely will involve a great deal of speculation about other people’s personal beliefs. I don’t think that is a very good topic at all.

As you want to keep things simple, and allowing your premise - which I don't - it would be because science in general (not just biology, or your ridiculously reductive 'DNists' - has only ever found natural processes to study.If you like, there is a working hypothesis that our world can be explained by natural processes but the minute they can't be, science will reconsider.What supernatural event do you propose they study?

Parsimony.The reason, for example, that we don’t waste time checking that pink pixies aren’t responsible for putting dew on the grass at nighttime.

"I had no need of that hypothesis" - Pierre-Simon LaplaceIf and when when we observe some phenomenon that is not or we have reason to believe cannot be explained in naturalistic terms we will look for something else. Until then look for something else. Until then Occa Razor excludes non-naturslistc explanations.But, of course, positing an all-powerful entity that can and does interfere with our Universe in any manner at any time for unknown reasons makes it impossible to carry out any scientific investigation. The Universe might completely change, making any previous observations invalid in the present. What7would you say to Pons and Fleischmann if they said cold fusion used to work but God intervened and it no longer works? Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

I don't think it's a premise.
I think it's a tentatively held conclusion.It's not like a bunch of people woke up and said "Hey... let's assume the Supernatural doesn't exist and totally ignore anything that would indicate it's presence!"
That's not how science works.Science works like this: "Hey, let's investigate! Look... we've investigated for hundreds of years, and have learned a vast amount about biological processes that we didn't know before. In all this learning - while looking for anything at all - no one has ever found any evidence that suggests that the supernatural exists or (if it does) that it has any influence on this world in any way at all. This is enough tentative evidence to allow us to stop considering the supernatural as a possible explanation for anything. Of course, the second any verifiable evidence of the supernatural exists - we will change our minds and promote further investigation."That's a "tentative conclusion" held within DN.
That's not an axiomatic premise of DN.In any given situation, they act in practically the same manner.
However, in the way you're attempting to frame the discussion - they have drastically different implications.Nothing about the Scientific Method excludes the supernatural.
It's just that the supernatural hasn't provided any way to be reliably detected (by anything at all... let alone the Scientific Method.)
Likely because the supernatural doesn't exist.But, again, that's a tentatively held conclusion based on the evidence.
That is not an axiomatically assumed premise.

Curiously I have some issues with the phraseology ... All sciences study what can be studied. The supernatural cannot be studied by scientific methods, and therefor supernatural is not considered in sciences. Whether or not God does not exist is not considered because the supernatural is not testable, being supernatural.We study the natural world to see how we can explain it through natural processes, because that is what we can do, not because of belief.In biology we study how life lives. In Abiogenesis we study how life may have developed. In evolution we study how life evolves from generation to generation, what are the processes involved and how do they work to explain the diversity of life as we know it, from history, from archaeology, from paleontology and from DNA. In ecology we study how life interacts. It’s not a belief, it’s a result of studying the natural world with the scientific tools we have. In other words you are setting up a straw man argument, and it particularly telling that you restrict evolution to Darwinism because that is a common ploy of creationists and IDologists. As is your implication that evolution is based on belief. Again, it is not a belief, it’s a result of studying the natural world with the scientific tools we have.We study the natural world to see how we can explain it through natural processes, because that is what we can do, not because of belief. And your argument is based on false premises and a strawman representation, and hence invalid.Enjoy

Hushshsh. Listen carefully.You can hear it rumbling from below. Soon it will try to erupt by poking its little voice tentatively into the air. Hear, again, the voice from the past; from debates decades old and long since settled.But what is evidence?Brush off your epistemology, locate your thesaurus. Be ready for yet another round of dueling dictionaries and creationist word games. The trope is about to arrive.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

As AZPaul3 & Paulk pointed out, this is not a YES/NO question. I’m wrong. What I wanted to emphasize at that time was when I found out I made something wrong, I would publicly state I’m wrong.Besides, I didn’t express the meaning of winning/losing clearly or correctly. The end of this discussion doesn’t mean someone wins or someone else loses. No. If a person is too concerned about personal win/loss, it only means that he/she is not mature yet. We come together in this forum because we are interested in pursuing truth. If I finally find my creationism is wrong, what I lose is the wrong idea, so I should be happy instead of sad. I mentioned my field was APPLIED theoretical , this means that my theoretical works must be tested by experiments. It is normal to find this or that mistakes before submitting a paper. Therefore, finding mistakes is a good thing for one that he/she can improve himself/herself.So, in the end, we are all winners. Let’s enjoy discussing and pursuing the truth.

They don't.Belief is out of place in science.

Probably a bit over the top.