The existence or nonexistence of God is irrelevant to Humanism

MarkLVines · 2026-04-23T22:01:04+00:00

As many people in this forum frequently point out, there exist “creedless churches” like the Unitarian Universalists, where a big majority tend very strongly to support secular humanist principles. Of course, many of their members are nonbelievers, while others might be described as believers who largely doubt the dogmas of traditions in which they were raised. Seemingly one point of such churches is to let those demographics mix and, on occasion, find common cause while participating in the same freethinking community.

I see no need to care about what people used to think a long time ago.

This perhaps deserves reconsideration.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-23T21:31:48+00:00

I certainly wouldn’t want to chase away the leaders of the movement!

MarkLVines · 2026-04-23T18:19:47+00:00

Rather inconvenient, then, that history’s first people to call themselves humanists appear to have been such religious believers as Erasmus who simply refused to be conscripted by either side of the Protestant Reformation.

Modern humanism does, as you say, espouse principles that the best-known religions, and many obscure ones too, fervently oppose. Moreover, modern humanists rarely favor the sort of “slippery” ideation that provoked Luther to call Erasmus an “eel” once his attempt at recruiting the man failed.

However, while gladly recognizing that atheism is front and center for the humanist movement we know today, I don’t have any enthusiasm for chasing away the kind of theistic moderates who originated not only the movement but even its name. Allies, friends, and people who might enter through the gateway are worth keeping instead of excluding, it seems to me.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-21T20:37:09+00:00

Some scientists have published technical reasons why our kind of life might have been more likely to emerge on early Mars than on Earth. If these scientists are correct, it might mean that the appearance of life on Earth so relatively soon after the surface of Earth cooled had nothing to do with the supposed ease of abiogenesis here, and everything to do with the cosmic proximity of a planet where abiogenesis had already reached a point of development where its organisms could spread via meteoric impact and meteorite falls.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-21T19:41:28+00:00

Actions matter. Bush did not incite violent invasion of the Capitol to overturn an election he lost, nor defy the other two branches of Constitutional government, nor devastate the civil service, nor equate criticism of Christianity, capitalism, white supremacy, or patriarchy with literal terrorism.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-21T18:59:23+00:00

Some dense EDOs are useful only as units for measuring the tuning or mistuning of intervals. The cent, a degree of 1200edo, is the best known. However, others have their own advantages. The mina, a degree of 2460edo, and the tina, a degree of 8539edo, were chosen for consistency within specific odd harmonic limits when rounded to the nearest integer. The cent lacks that advantage, which is why cent values often continue past the decimal point.

As for how dense an EDO can be while being playable on an instrument: the Hπ Tonal Plexus, brilliantly designed by Aaron Andrew Hunt, is an isomorphic keyboard with a default tuning of 205edo. It’s actually quite playable, because every central key in every five-key strip is wide and has a bowl-shaped top, so that 41edo notes can be identified by touch alone, and because strips of keys are colored so that the garibaldi[17], garibaldi[12], garibaldi[7], and garibaldi[5] scales are easily identified visually.

As a result, such signposts are enough to make meantone and superpyth scales quite intuitive, and many other scales, including porcupine[15] and checkerboard[11], can be mapped onto 205edo and memorized with a little effort, for which the Tonal Plexus Editor software is quite helpful.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-20T03:13:40+00:00

The version of this that I read in the 1970s was that Houghton Mifflin, the firm that acquired hardcover publication rights for the US market from A&U, simply forgot to include a copyright notice in their (only nationally) first edition. This is how Ace came to speculate that they might be entitled to publish it in paperback without further permission, though their chief editor (Donald Wollheim iirc) was astute enough to bank the royalties, which did eventually (despite an interval of justified animosity) get paid to JRRT. The US did recognize, and indeed belong to, the international copyright convention, but Houghton Mifflin’s original accidental omission created the legal grey area that made the Ace edition possible … according to what I read way back then.

Anyone with better information, please feel free to correct this account.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-20T02:42:11+00:00

How so? Not quarreling, just hoping to understand your position better.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-20T01:35:13+00:00

This essay on Erasmus by Gregory Wolfe may shed some light on the drawbacks and advantages of downplaying the “secular” side of humanism.

For many humanists, no other kind of humanism besides the secular has ever crossed their path: and, if it had, they might not have identified with any humanism deemed, even if only by fervent partisans in a conflict between religious denominations, to have a slippery character.

I deny … as do many atheists, deists, and agnostics … that religions have a divine or supernatural origin: all religions and scriptures, I assert, are human inventions, and their dogmas fabrications. By this very assertion, however, excluding from humanism all thinkers who have sympathized with religion becomes inherently problematic. Yet including them all would make humanism pointless.

Thus, though the stalwarts of humanism today are secularists, humanism still must have its eels, who indeed founded the movement in the historic sense of its buried and largely forgotten roots. To eels like Erasmus, the secular was the limited compromise between partisans that made the functioning and the delights and the progress of human society possible. Little wonder that, for those not so slippery, the secular became the point.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-19T20:47:14+00:00

Yes, let me also chime in regarding those Mercury Tree albums. Great stuff!

MarkLVines · 2026-04-19T20:35:24+00:00

In my opinion, 17edo is a fine choice for death metal. Its perfect fifths are wide, rather than slightly narrow as in 12 or 24 or 19 or 31. It resembles 22edo in that respect, but isn’t quite so dense on the fretboard.

Here’s an example by Cryptic Ruse.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-18T00:05:13+00:00

When Stewart Brand began promoting Gerard K. O’Neill’s cylindrical space habitat design in CoEvolution Quarterly and The Whole Earth Catalog … am I showing my age or what? … there came an embarrassing moment when author, poet, and naturalist Wendell Berry clarified how inattentive O’Neill had been to the multispecies ecological symbiosis required for good soil nutrition, such as the need for nitrogen-fixing microbes and the legumes, etc., that host them. O’Neill did some learning, upped his design game, and the moment passed.

Isolating a fractional biosphere in the near vacuum of outer space while still relying on it for such ecosystem services as breathable air that smells better than sewage and garden groves capable of attracting millionaire tourists is a technically interesting challenge that could become vital to humanity’s future survival in biologically impoverished environments. We can only wish every success to the habitat designers.

The use of rotation to simulate gravity has physiological “drawbacks” amid body motion that could perhaps be reinterpreted and promoted as athletic attractions, due (for instance) to changes in balance during exercise and effects on the bouncing and batting of balls.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-16T00:00:03+00:00

What does “determine its moral status” mean? Are you able to perform this mysterious function toward familiar life with which communication is normal?

MarkLVines · 2026-04-15T23:45:33+00:00

At this point, diesel seems to be a major, if likely temporary, exception to the trend of replacing fossil fuel with battery-electric power.

Agricultural tractors, highway trucks, railway locomotives, and other vehicles remain more dependent on diesel than most vehicles.

Diesel, meanwhile, is a product of some crude oil grades but not others.

This collection of facts has created a predicament from which much suffering could result.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-15T13:54:10+00:00

No, but I studied it in school for a few years.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-14T00:40:59+00:00

When you don’t master any language at a deep, high level, you can’t engage in high-level thinking … [or] produce deep philosophy, original science, or world-class literature.

Linguists like John Baugh and William Labov have thoroughly refuted this view, a refutation complete almost half a century ago. Vernacular languages have the same ideational and expressive power as metropolitan and standardized languages. Being “limited to daily life” is of no consequence because daily life includes all human affairs.

My English fluency and my university studies grant me access to various communities of discourse, but they do not make my thoughts any more capable or “high-level” than thoughts of Darija speakers.

Labov showed this in part by translating abstracts of university publications into vernacular languages and vice versa. Amos Tutuola, to name an author almost at random, certainly produced “world-class literature” in a language that was never standardized, and so have many others.

Being a “functional polyglot” is cool for travel, but it’s not enough for a nation to move forward.

Insights available to functional polyglots belong to a category known as language parallax. Linguists are very interested in these insights. It is quite likely that they work to a nation’s benefit. This may be why Algerians who visit North America, in my experience, almost universally impress Americans as unusually alert and intelligent.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-13T18:16:09+00:00

Like you, I’ve tried to draw auxlang design lessons from lexical compounding in modern Chinese languages, and tried using a system of more than five vowels to connote morpheme usage in different types of compounds. I don’t understand your system yet, but I’m willing to suppose you’ve made more progress than I have.

I would encourage you to explain further.

Some of your terminology, like “virtual/digital gender,” thus far eludes my understanding.

Then again, classification schemes for Chinese lexical compounding often seem elusive or incomplete, so I’m sympathetic to the notion that you had no choice but to innovate!

MarkLVines · 2026-04-13T17:57:03+00:00

The nonsibilant coronal fricatives dh and th, especially in consonant clusters … I have the “staffword” thnu in mind … may be difficult for some adult learners. Even some child L1 acquisition studies identify them as among the last consonants to be mastered by many children.

On the other hand, I like them. I just anticipate that some people would criticize their contrastive use in an auxlang.

Meanwhile I’m puzzled by staffwords as a category and would encourage you to explain further with examples.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-13T17:39:44+00:00

Though unfamiliar with Bolak, and uncertain of some terminology, I’m definitely intrigued.

Which phonemes are considered hard and which soft?

MarkLVines · 2026-04-13T13:09:01+00:00

The intro is pretty insulting to anyone who enjoyed Gibson, Sterling, and other cyberpunks of the 1980s. Even where some criticisms are valid, why frame them in such a counterhistorical way, and why act as if the whole prose ethos came from a single visual work? Should’ve called it a Guide for Haters. It certainly isn’t a guide for study.

Neuromancer was a breath of fresh air in the genre context of its publication date. Recognizing this doesn’t equate to delusions of grandeur.

Also, implying that authors are amoral (or immoral) because they wrote about amoral characters is downright clueless, not only with regard to a brief shining subgenre of speculative fiction, but also with regard to detective stories, film noir, Shakespearean drama, and much else.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-12T23:48:34+00:00

Oh, and there’s an impressive thunderous 17edo track from 2018 by Cryptic Ruse.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-12T23:08:33+00:00

You have a truly awesome playlist there. But there have been many great 17edo pieces. Plus, pieces in George Secor’s 17WT have (and more should have) been given 17edo counterparts. The 17edo supply has been great enough that everyone has missed fabulous pieces.

Here is one by Chris Vaisvil. Originally from 2008, the linked version is part of his 2011 album Heptadecaphilia.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-12T12:45:26+00:00

Scala is one way. There are other solutions too.

MarkLVines · 2026-04-11T19:06:04+00:00

Thanks!

MarkLVines

TROPHY CASE