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

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

It isn't so much that only natural laws operate. It's that natural laws are all we can examine. If there was a God that interacted with the real world in a predictable manner, it could certainly be incorporated into science.

That's a political issue, not a scientific one. You can't teach creationism in an American school because it's religion, not science. In Canada, we're not quite as explicit. You could probably teach creationism in a Canadian school but we don't because it's rubbish. There's no "science" demon stopping us.

You really should drop the D altogether. Nothing in science really depends on Darwin any more; everything has been cross-checked so many times. Mentioning Darwin just shows you are behind the times.

How is it less understandable now? Mendel's work on genetics added a mechanism. But why mention Darwin at all? You might as well call modern physics "Neo-Newtonism".

How is the "message" written on the molecule? What is the ink?

What you're saying is that humans manufacture information. They don't "discover" it.

You keep mentioning humans. Without humans there is no information.

Of course not. I'm saying that prior to human existence no information existed. Just like no limericks existed.It's the same argument as saying that DNA contains no mystical code. All it is is an arrangement of atoms that behaves in certain ways depending on the arrangement. "Information" is just the spin that humans put on it.

There may be dolphin information and even ant information. When you learn to read it you can compare it to human information. In any case, it's still just a dolphin interpretation or an ant interpretation of dolphin reality or ant reality. It has no inherent existence. First, there is no "purposeful arrangement". DNA does not have a purpose.Second, how is it even possible for some mystical message to be written on the atoms themselves, independent of the atoms themselves? What is the ink?I use the word "mystical" very deliberately because there is no real message other than the arrangement of the atoms.Edited by ringo, : Fixed attribution

It would exist only IN the mind of whatever was thinking it. Information is a product of mind. The same reality becomes very different information in the mind of a human and the mind of an ant. Consciousness, mathematics, science, etc. are STATES of the matter within the mind. They are how the brain rearranges itself accoding to input from the senses. Like water has a purpose to run downhill? That's a function, a behaviour. What you imagine as a "purpose" is just the result it happens to have. But how? What is the medium? What is the message made of? How would you distinguish matter that carries a message from matter that does not? The information is dependent on the matter in the medium in which it is stored, minds, paper and ink, etc. Erase every copy from the matter and the information is gone with no way to get it back. You remind me of my brother when he was young. You could show him six ways from Sunday that something wasn't true and his response would be, "But I think it is."

I was taught that data was a collection of observations and information is data that has been analyzed, interpreted, etc. so that it "means" something.The raw data is a perception of reality and the information is an interpretation of the perception. All in the mind.

Maybe spend less time analyzing what you need to reply to and more time replying.

Dictionary definitions are often not adequate in scientific discussions. No.Reality exists. Observations of reality (data) require on observer (perceiver).

Exactly. Because it is CREATED within the individual mind based on the unique set of inputs received by that mind. Your example doesn't answer the question. If every copy of Macbeth was erased from every mind and every medium, how would it be rebuilt? You claim that the information in Macbeth is floating around out there somewhere in the cosmos. So if Shakespeare managed to figure it out once, somebody else should be able to figure it out again. How? Be specific. No, I'm using thw word "mind" pretty much interchangeably with "brain". If you think the mind is more than just a brain function, you're going to have to supply a whole lot of evidence.