chockfull

They were understood in the medium's case. You just haven't read the account referenced by Samarin yet. I'll leave off the other name calling to you. On p. 56 of Samarin's article, paragraph 2, he references Albert Le Baron's personal record, which was submitted to the American Society for Psychical Research by William James. Below is Le Baron's account written in that article: So tell me again how the languages weren't understood? If they weren't understood, then how would it be possible to "pencil them down and subsequently trace them to primitive Dravidian or British Indian?"

Sure. It's not an unreasonable opinion. And we have a couple accounts of this even in our miniscule sample space on this forum. The "documented" part is called into question, and there are legitimate reasonable unanswered questions in the accounts that we would want to see as documentation. The studies bring up some of these, like the language background of the speaker, individual accounts from the person themselves who heard the tongue in their native language, answers to questions like 'was it just a random word here and there, or were there fully formulated phrases and sentences in your native language' etc. etc. ad nauseum. Basically to try and get more detail showing facts and stories that would lead an average person to conclude the person wasn't lying and the speaker didn't have the previous exposure to the language to fake it. One such account acknowledged as true proves it. It is difficult to impossible to disprove tongues are a currently or previously known language. So what is "proven and incontrovertible fact" concerning the matter? Very little indeed.

Yeah I know. There is a burden of proof dilemma - who's responsible to prove it. Then there's the actual proof dilemma, proving a negative. Both are dilemmas. And it is a TON of energy wasted because Raf keeps using the "proven fact and undisputed" line. The average reader can see the disputation of this in almost any page in this 60-page thread. I call this the "Iraq Minister of Defense" logical fallacy, where every sound bite you hear from the guy he was proclaiming how the Iraqi army was victorious over the invading Americans. Proving a negative is hard to impossible? Geez. I guess you think the reader can't read the 100+ times you've written "modern SIT is not a language", and "that is a proven fact and undisputed".

I read your accusation "your goal has been to defend it at any cost" to be projection. You don't know my inner heart thoughts, desires, and goals. So you must be talking about your goals here. You are so delusional about "factually true and undisputed" that you refuse to even acknowledge that the scientific method inherently acknowledges the difficulty of proving a negative. Proving SIT is not a language and never was a language such as the definition of it states even science says in general about that type of proof that it is difficult to impossible.

My goal is still to investigate SIT. And my opinion on the research changes the more I delve into the facts and the more I read. When my opinion changes, such as on the term "free vocalization", I explain the reasons why. Of course, that I keep stating it as my opinion makes it a whole lot easier to read than if I was trying to claim it as proven fact all the way down the line. You keep saying it is "factually true and undisputed" that modern SIT doesn't produce a language. Yet you even yourself admit that it cannot be proven that the languages are not "existing living or dead human languages" as the most basic definition of SIT states they are. Now yes, I have to phrase that in a different way for you to admit - prove they "are not languages spoken today on Earth or that were spoken sometime in the past". But the underlying truth is still there. It is not proven that modern SIT doesn't produce a language. And not disputed? Sheesh - there's been valid disputation going on for the bulk of this thread. It's completely dishonest to say undisputed.

And I acknowledge this as your admission that the things I am challenging you to either produce an incontrovertible fact on or stop stating it as fact when it is your opinion are things which you are unable to prove. And so rather than get honest about it you would rather call me names and leave.

Apparently, we have different objectives. Yours is "to make your point", and "to answer silly, ridiculous accusations". Mine is to investigate this phenomena we call SIT, see what is out there scientifically on it, read it and analyze it, look at the doctrine and verses taught us in TWI and formulate a reasonable "post-TWI" stance on it, all to get a better grasp on a part of my private prayer life that has seemed to serve all right for me over the last 3 decades and more, and to see whether or not the accusation of me faking it and lying to myself had any basis to it or not, or if it was just someone spouting off hot air.

And again, more opinion as fact. Please show me where there is incontrovertible proof that they are producing the same thing. The only thing observed SINCE NONE OF THE LANGUAGES WERE UNDERSTOOD (except in medium's cases), were that they phonetically sounded the same. Which you have already beat that point to death getting at your opinion that just because they were phonetically similar doesn't prove anything.

Find a fact that proves this. Not a study where the people involved didn't understand the language and thus concluded it was not a language. Not a medium talking to his spirit guide (which actually DID produce a human language). Not someone concluding that because it was "non-conversational" that it wasn't a language. A fact proving that it was not a currently used language or one that was used at some point on Earth. Until you do this, I guess all you've got is telling me to shut up. Pathetic. It seems all I ever do in an exchange like this is to get you to finally drop back to you calling it "your opinion" as opposed to stating it as fact one more time.

No, testable evidence does not agree with you. You have conceded that nobody has proven that the SIT samples reviewed by the study writers "never would have been understood by anyone on Earth at any time". Thus, testable evidence does not agree with you. I even pointed out the lack of thoroughness of people doing the studies where they did not offer up the samples they were using worldwide to see if ANYONE currently living understood the languages. The study writers simply noted that they themselves, and others involved did not understand what was being spoken. So in summary, no the evidence does not support your conclusion. Next on the quality of the samples, which we do not have access to. We cannot corroborate, verify, examine, question the subjects like the burden of proof you want to place on tom and scott. So to accept those samples and reject the accounts of tom and scott for those exact reasons is completely illogical.

The fact that those claims are the ones that are illustrated in the very works you are now ignoring except for the terms "universally discredited" you are using kind of shows something about the credibility you have when using the word "prove". The fact that the term xenoglossia comes from an "automatic writing" study in which nobody is speaking at all kind of suggests something different, but hey, don't let facts get in your way. Actually, I think one of the medium messages from his spirit guide was in Spanish, which the medium didn't understand, but others did. You know, sometimes it helps if you actually spend more time reading the studies than you do immediately knee-jerk posting your opinions as proof. When you keep doing this, post after post, stating your opinion as fact, it leaves me with little alternative. I can either post the opposite opinion as fact equally, like "Those who SIT absolutely are producing human languages" to try and get equal billing time. Or I can call you out on it. But at this point, I think you know there are problems with you stating your opinion as fact, and you just don't care. You just want to get the rhetoric out there as many times stated as possible. So I'll state my take on this whole thing. And I'm going to call you out on it again. Those in Acts were SIT and producing tongues. Those today who SIT are also producing tongues. Some today are upset with their previous experience, either because they were dishonest, or have become dissatisfied with the cultic practices of the group that taught them this, or someone taught them in an abusive fashion and environment, or they have changed their view on the trinity and now want to worship an ethereal third persona of the Godhead called the Holy Spirit and relinquish control to "Him", or various other reasons. So they want to distance themselves from their previous experience. A very easy way to do this is to project their dissatisfaction on others. This is a psychological term called "projection". That is what you are doing. You are "projecting" your distrust that the Bible works today like it did for those in Acts on others. You have no logical explanation for why this would change, only point to existing theology opinions that it "died with the Apostles". When we are discussing subject sources, you dismiss some out of hand with very weak logical reasoning. Then later you feel bad about offending one of these people and apologize to them on the same thread you are acting this way on. Somehow we end up with a medium and his conversation with what the medium himself calls "spirit guides, psychic automatons, etc." are used in studies on SIT. And they "prove" that non-Christians can "free vocalize", which to me is kind of a BS term that describes they could either be SIT or talking to a spirit guide but producing similar sounding things to scientists who don't speak the languages involved. So yes, by all means, please point out how "ridiculous" my arguments are. And in the process, please try to avoid looking more "ridiculous" yourself. Let's start with the term "free vocalization" as being BS. It's not Biblical, it's not scientific, it's a descriptive word trying to lump two things together that don't belong together in the first place.

I am commenting on others' terms and studies. I don't draw conclusions in an all-encompassing and knee-jerk fashion, and then proclaim my opinion as "truth" or "proven". That would be more like the fashion you are arguing, it's true, but that's not how I roll. If you want to consider it a "strawman" to point out that doing studies on mediums and their spirit guides and using them to "prove" conclusions about SIT and how it works is inherently problematic, then by all means label that a strawman and hack away at it there, Don Quixote.

I wanted to chip in here on my perception of test subjects, eyewitness accounts, etc. When I started delving into the samples that some of these people writing books and studies had, what started to surface to me was the huge variation in sources that were being accepted. I see Poythress talk about how "free vocalization" can be performed by those not claiming Christian background. I see references in Samarin to xenoglossia. Then I see the actual examples they are talking about - the written works of William James to the American Psychic Research center of the account of Albert Lee getting messages from his "psychic automatism", the definition of the term xenoglossia by Charles Richet involving the medium that showed evidence of automatic writing in two languages. These are the bulk of the cited samples I see in research work of "non-Christians" doing "free vocalization". I will say that two firsthand accounts of people experiencing the phenomenon where there was SIT in a fellowship and people understood what was said in the tongue is AT LEAST equal and probably A LOT MORE PERTINENT to the topic we are studying than the examples presented in research. Why so? As I stated before, it seems that scientists are completely unable to distinguish between holy spirit and devil spirit in these accounts. In these accounts, we know people that were involved. We have heard their stories and experiences with TWI, we know how they think, we know their base reputation as not being prone to lying, we have physical details of the accounts involved. We don't have all the people's names, or their firsthand testimony of them understanding the SIT. To me, for me to be honest in evaluating these, I have to rank the sources. I rank them according to detail, credibility, reliability. And honestly I have to put socks and Tom's accounts higher at proving SIT than I do those of mediums talking to their spirit guides are related to proving "non-Christian free vocalization". Then I read Samarin's expressions of how amazed he is at the innate linguistic ability of mankind, to so closely reproduce the phonetic elements of a language in SIT. His amazement is at the subconscious human mind, how it can in such a detailed fashion craft all of these things. My amazement is a little different. I'm amazed at first, why a man not born-again would have such an interest in investigating spiritual born-again related phenomena, and secondarily how inept science is at measuring anything spiritual and coming to a rational logical conclusion. To me it is nowhere near a rational logical conclusion to look at a medium's account of communicating with his spirit guide, that spirit guide speaking in two languages, and to conclude that "free vocalization can be performed by non-Christians", and thus take that as proof that all Christian phenomena in the category is fake.

In the accounts I read of this people were amazed and gave the glory to God. And remembered it decades later. And it was confirmed by everyone in the room. Oh, you mean "confirmed in a lab"??? The only thing confirmed in a lab is experiments on mice.

LOL. If you don't HAVE the knowledge, then you CAN'T DEMONSTRATE IT. SIT is not demonstrating the knowledge of a language, it is demonstrating the language itself. Oh, I don't know. I think the etymology of the word xenoglossia coming from mediums performing automatic writing is pretty useful. It certainly shows the scientists' absolute lack of ability to discern between Holy Spirit and devil spirit. "Modern SIT does not produce this". And there goes Raf with the opinion rhetoric train again. I contend that modern SIT DOES produce this, and that scientists with the demonstrated ability to not be able to discern between devil spirit and holy spirit are inept at measuring it. And that their sample space may very well be contaminated with fakers. And here comes my favorite strawman again. I'm just praying via the spirit and leaving the language part of it up to God and trusting Him to do what He says He will in scriptures. Is what is produced a human language? I DON'T KNOW OTHER THAN THE BIBLE I BELIEVE SAYS IT IS Is it the tongue of an angel? I DON'T KNOW - COULD BE THAT OR COULD BE ITS JUST FIGURATIVELY REFERRING TO ITS POWER AND HOLINESS. I'm just letting the Bible speak for itself and I'm walking out on its promises. I trust that as you state, glossa means languages and what is produced is a language. But I've never had a first-hand experience like socks to prove it to myself. LOL! So back to your fictional example, if you were SIT in understandable Swahili to Samarin, where do you think on the ACTFL language proficiency scale that would put your knowledge of Swahili? Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, or Superior?

I'm sure that it's highly likely we are going to mouth off to each other in this conversation, despite all our best human intentions. It is a detailed topic that involves specialties we never studied like linguistics, we are analyzing studies via the scientific method and discussing rules of logic, we are defining terms that have sketchy backgrounds and little agreed common ground, and we are discussing doctrinal topics including specific scriptures and their interpretation. We are doing this over an internet forum, which makes it more tedious than a normal conversation. And we are coming from an abusive cult. Suffice it to say that I have low expectations for both this discussion and our behavior. And I find myself consistently exceeding even the lowness of those expectations I suppose I can accept credit for exceeding low expectations!!!! LOL!!!!! Raf, I'm not taking the static personally, and don't you either. My disclaimer is that my mouthing off does not reflect my inner thoughts and innate value estimation of Raf or others on this thread. Raf's a pretty sharp guy, and it's been pretty fun in a manner of speaking worming through the muck with him on the topic. If you need me to apologize for each individual mouthing off, I will. Sorry for those.

Well, I read in Samarin's article the context of xenoglossia before. And it is a term that originated in studying psychic phenomenon, more specifically, automatic writing. Automatic writing is when in a séance, the medium encloses a pen or piece of chalk completely between two writing surfaces and ties it up. Then the spirit guide writes down messages. Apparently some of these messages were in other languages, and sometimes they were translated. So the term was coined to come up with a description for how the medium learned those languages without ever studying them. Then magically, by the stroke of some genius theologian somewhere, the term came to be loosely associated with SIT. And I say loosely because there is no way SIT even remotely resembles automatic writing in a different language. Samarin himself describes it as the "knowledge of a language", so that was the definition I was speaking from. I find your conclusion that someone saying a few phrases in a language consists of "a knowledge of a language" to be lacking. I find that the difference between that and a true "knowledge of a language", such as that which is described and measured via sources like the ACTFL Proficiency Guides (http://www.languagetesting.com/actfl-proficiency-scale) to be quite large indeed.

I'm not asking you to believe anything. I was completely foolish even responding to your question about what I thought a linguist who wrote an article 44 years ago might speculate about a fictional event. Now, apparently your underlying reasons for this are coming out. You were asking the questions as a trap to bait me. Here, let me put this whole question to rest for you. I DON'T KNOW what a linguist who wrote an article 44 years ago might think about a fictional miraculous phenomenon that he experienced. But I'll highlight some POSSIBLE RESPONSES for you: Samarin might: 1) Jump up and down for joy. 2) Jump up and down in anger. 3) Fall down on his face and worship God 4) Tear out all his hair 5) Go and get an ice cream Now that's not an exclusive list, but it should be enough to keep you busy refuting me for a while at least. I don't know what he might think is or is not xenoglossia. He further writes about it - direct quote: "The word [xenoglossia], in fact, is supposed to have been coined by Charles Richet (as xenoglossie in French) at the turn of the century when he reported on his investigation of "automatic writing in foreign language" to the London Society for Psychical Research." So he also might think you are a psychic?

So let me recap. We are in the middle of a thread where you are presenting tons of "proofs" that SIT is not a language and not real, and the scientific method you want to use is to try and speculate how a linguist who wrote an article 30 years ago might react to a fictional event? And I'm the one looking ridiculous? It's equally likely that after 30 years he tired of the subject and now has zero interest in it any more. Can you get a little more petty than this? All the roots of the word are right from the Bible, oh but the whole word isn't. Come on, now. I don't even know what point you are trying to make about this at all. You stated one plausible explanation, I stated another. Neither proves anything.

Yes that explanation is reasonable. So are several other explanations that would provide a cause for that which are equally reasonable. Look, you are getting some confusion in your terminology here. I call this an explanation, not a postulate. A postulate is to assume without proof, or as self-evident. To take for granted. Geometry has postulates of point, line and plane. These are universally accepted as true without the need to prove them. Now while I could let you slide on that definition, it would be you shooting yourself in the foot. You don't state postulates about something you are proving. That's the whole point of proving it. But then again that seems to be a common theme in this thread - you mixing up postulates with proofs. Again - that's one plausible explanation among many. Another plausible explanation is they were SIT with a non-native speaker's accent. No it doesn't prove anything. And I'm certainly not postulating that anything phonetically resembling a language IS a language. Presenting sketchy postulates as proven fact does nothing but confuse people.

Look I have no idea how he would respond if God performed that miracle right in front of his face. I see accounts in the Bible where people fall down on their face and worship God. But there is absolutely no way to tell how a man is going to react to something. Well, if you don't like the conclusion you are at, perhaps you ought to re-evaluate the logic that got you there. Here's the verse and transliteration of I Cor. 12:30: "have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?" " mh. pa,ntej cari,smata e;cousin ivama,twnÈ mh. pa,ntej glw,ssaij lalou/sinÈ mh. pa,ntej diermhneu,ousinÈ" Why don't we invite the reader to play "where's Waldo?" and see if they can find glossolalia somewhere in the horrible cut and paste job I did from my Greek text? Or I guess we could just believe you when you state your opinion as fact again.......

No they don't. I dealt with this in a previous post where Samarin discusses the "derivative and innovative" features of glossa. He studied this by comparing glossa samples to an English consonant map, found that the sounds mapped, but then noted that applied to "several other" known languages. Then he describes "innovative" features where the sounds being made weren't in the native language, and he postulates that's because someone had exposure to the language before. This is easily explained by the fact your first learned language will produce an accent in another language you learn. And in phonetic structure Samarin found glossa samples to phonetically be similar to language to the point where he could distinguish between them and samples of "gibberish" inserted. They had sentences, phrasing, word breakdowns, etc.

Ummmm - everywhere you see the term "speaking in tongues" that is the Greek word glossolalia. That's where the term comes from. You demonstrating a KNOWLEDGE of the language would involved not just speaking words you don't understand but would involve you understanding the language when it is spoken to you. That's the difference between a "knowledge" of a language, and just speaking it. If you understood it when it was spoken to you, then it would not need to be interpreted. Look, even basic common sense in discussing this bears this out. If I speak another language like Spanish, and I tell my friends "I know Spanish" then when we go to Tiajuana do you think they are going to expect that I can converse with the cab driver? Or just that I can speak it to him but not understand anything he says? And discussing possible scenarios about what we think Samarin might conclude about them is about as far from anything scientific as I can imagine.

Not so much this as the linguists haven't had an understanding of the languages involved. I'm still not seeing why some of these linguists, or people heavily invested in proof, don't do something like post up all of the samples of SIT on one website and offer a reward for anyone able to identify verifiably what language they are.

All right, I'm looking up xenoglossolalia in other references, and it seems that definition is all over the map. Some say it's the same as glossolalia, others say it's glossolalia but describing the miracle where others understood (so socks example would be xenoglossolalia). Still others say like I think Samarin is saying that it involves "knowledge" of the language. Dictionary definitions aren't any better that I could find. One describes xenoglossolalia as SIT, and has a link to the glossolalia definition, which is taken from the psychic and occult dictionary.