Raf

Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I don't see a clear distinction drawn between "evidence" and "proof." Anecdotes ARE evidence by definition, but not all evidence is reliable. Joseph Smith said he translated the golden plates. Other people close to him swore they watched him do it, sort of. Those are anecdotes. That they're also horse hit is obvious to even the most gullible of people. But ask a Mormon. A smart one. One who has shown genuine ability in the real world requiring brains. Like Mitt Romney. He buys the evidence. And can anyone of us prove it didn't happen? You were there? Huh? Huh? More later.

I went looking for this post and was pleased to find it. It outlines why I believe the word "tongues" and the word "languages" are interchangeable in the context of this subject. Tongues in the Bible were always known human languages, whether or not they were understood by the speaker or audience.

Honest and for true, I'm trying not to get sucked back into ALL of what we already previously hashed out and left unresolved, but... My memory may be flawed, but I think part of the difficulty regarding "criteria" had to do with the fact that the criteria were inadequate to the question we were asking. That is, "SIT by definition is not used by one person to communicate with another person. Language is. Therefore, SIT is not language." Heck, even I can see the flaw in that logic, so I refuse to make the "criteria" argument without listing the criteria in question, some of which are simply not applicable because when we're talking about SIT, we're not talking about people communicating with each other. This goes back to what I discussed earlier with phonemic inventory, which does use the expertise of linguists with the express purpose of seeking to determine whether a person practicing SIT is producing a known language. The logic goes like this: Every language has a distinct phonemic inventory. Every SIT sample has a distinct phonemic inventory. Conceivably, we should be able to take the phonemic inventory of SIT and match it to a known language, THEN determine whether the actual words and sentences match the language. Presto! Evidence! It doesn't happen. Time and again, when such things have been studied, the phonemic inventory comes back to the speaker's native language, with allowances made for phonemes the person has encountered (Chappy Chanukah!). English speakers who SIT produce rearranged English phonemes, not distinct languages. Likewise for Spanish, French, etc. Chockfull's shower time notwithstanding. Yes, we can anticipate that not every SIT will be matched to a particular language. The SIT may match the phonemic inventories of multiple languages (the longer the sample, the fewer matches). But again, this goes back to something I said earlier: WE ONLY NEED ONE CONFIRMED MATCH OF SIT-TO-LANGUAGE FOR ME TO BE WRONG. One. A. Single. Match. There are plenty of reasons to expect that a particular sample won't match a language. There is no logical reason to think that hundreds, thousands of people SIT on a regular basis and no one can verify it except -- exclusively -- through tales of long ago involving people we conveniently can't find anymore. Here's a good rule of thumb: If you wouldn't accept an argument in defense of a competing religion's claims, do not expect me to accept the same argument in defense of SIT.

My Girl Jamie Lee Curtis Halloween

Before he married Lillith, and before he met Diane, Frasier was married to a children's entertainer named Nanny G, who shows up in three episodes, each time played by a different actress. The last incarnation was a super-horny Laurie Metcalf, who delivered the line in question on the last season of "Frasier." And yes, Kelsey Grammer was finishing his 20th season playing Frasier by that time (nine on Cheers, 11 on his own show). Which means you're up.

Imagine for a moment an empty glass. Saying it's half-full is faith. Saying it's half empty is incomplete. Saying it's empty is not fear. It is not doubt. It is not negative or pessimistic. It's an empty glass. Now I want you to imagine... there's no glass.

In a 2004 episode of this popular series, a character named "Nanny G." (a children's entertainer who's not a main character on the show) looks at her ex-husband (who IS a main character on the show) and says, " Do you know what it's like to play the same character for twenty years?" The audience got a big laugh out of that, with good reason.

Oh, I guess I'm up. Ish.

Nick Stahl Terminator 3: Fall of a Franchise Claire Danes

No shoehorn necessary! I think MY bottom line is that there are so many natural explanations that a supernatural explanation is by definition less plausible. But we can disagree. Wouldn't be the first time.

I could be mistaken, but I do believe we are not dealing with people who have no familiarity with the English language. Sorry. Think about it. They have literally sat through hours and hours and hours of information presented in English and translated for them, information that they are religiously interested in. SIT is what, two sentences? If someone told you this story to support Islam you would reject it before they reached the h in Allah. The natural explanations are all more plausible than "they spoke in tongues and it was English." 1. They knew more English than they let on. 2. They practiced, knowing they would be in the USA. 3. Someone's fibbing about the whole story. Knowing nothing else, I think a combination of 1 and 2 fits the facts quite neatly. By the way, whatever happened to "no man understandeth"? Is that only applicable in firsthand situations? Sorry, I had to. I know, I said I'd shut up. But I didn't expect a whole new anecdote when I said that.

And no motive to lie there!

Wait, THEY WERE IN THE ADVANCED CLASS? In Ohio? In... French?

Ok, so some men from Zaire who did not know English were in a believers meeting in the USA, which was in English? And they, not knowing English, spoke in tongues and it was English. And we do not know who these African visitors were or where they are now. Somewhere in the DRC. And we know they didn't know English because why would two foreign born followers of TWI visiting the USA and attending a believers meeting possibly have any prior familiarity with the English language? Got it

I'm not challenging your anecdote. I'm just trying to get it straight so that I understand it properly: Two people who you know // were in a meeting in Zaire// and they saw men who speak French and a native African language.// One of those men spoke in tongues and it was English. And you're no longer in touch with the two people that you know.So I guess it's knew. Have I got that right?

Take the last word: I promise I'll shut up.

Have people and facts attached to them? No, they don't. That's why they're not credible! Who were these people? Where are they now? Hmm? Right. Back to Asia! Come now. As for my blanket claim that everyone faked it: I have provided the mechanism for faking it, which we were all taught, and the motive, which was pure and sincere. I'm willing to accept your sincerity, but you can't reasonable assert that "my claim" is less credible than a series of stories whose principle players have all vanished.

No one said it had to be conscious. Anyway, DRAW! We've been here before. This is where we walked in, remember! Salud! And, on a related note, I mentioned toward the end of the original debates/discussions that I was waiting for the outcome a study of glossolalia that categorized the utterances by phonemic inventory. I haven't brought it up since then because... I'm... still.... waiting.... The last time I checked, in November, there was a possible May publication date. I have no reason at this point to assert with confidence that this will actually take place, but if it does, you'll all be the 3,000th, 3,001st, and 3,002nd to know.

They were rejected because they were not credible. They have as much going for them as ghost stories and urban legends. None of the principle players could be contacted to verify the accounts. And this is the case with every single one of those stories.

1. I couldn't possibly begin to argue with your experience in terms of what I said, but I can approach it with honest questions. Namely, "Tongues I've heard from my own mouth contain glottal stops, dipthongs, pitch variations that do not match romance language." That may be the case, but were they sounds with which you were not familiar? I speak English and some Spanish, but I am aware of phonemes from some other languages (my go-to is the "ch" in Chanukah) and, being aware of such sounds, it would have been easy for me to incorporate them into a tongue. If you're exposed to a phoneme (whether or not you know that's what it's called) then you can incorporate it, QED. 2. You're welcome.

Picking up from previous threads on this (Questioning Faith) forum: Ok, guys, Uncle. Over the last 24 hours I realized there were a BUNCH of posts addressed to me on a handful of threads, and I've tried to answer a bunch of them publicly and privately. But as I keep reading, I keep seeing points I want to address buried in posts that were lengthy to begin with. I'm not deliberately ignoring points, but you guys had what looks like a full day's head start on me. I'm going to try to exercise a little self control by not addressing eVeRyThInG, but if I skipped a point you made and you want me to address it, please feel free to raise it again and I will be more than happy.

Semi-seriously, if God were all-knowing, or even reasonably intelligent, he would have put the tree of knowledge in Australia. The chance of Adam and Eve being tempted would have been eliminated. The story makes no sense!

This is what we call a "non-sequitur." It is when you connect two concepts as though one proves the other, although one doesn't actually prove the other. Namely: Paul praying privately in tongues DOES NOT "refute the claim" that unless the tongues you speak are understandable by some other person then they aren't real tongues. The claim that speaking in tongues should produce an actual human language is biblically defensible, as I have shown multiple times across multiple threads. In the Bible, tongues ARE languages. They are synonyms. Speaking in languages IS speaking in languages. So if you're not producing a language, you are not speaking in tongues. Paul praying privately DOES NOT NEGATE the fact that he would be producing a language. If Paul said he prayed in tongues privately to God, it follows BY DEFINITION that he prayed to God in a language that he himself did not understand. It's still a language understandable by some other person. So, respectfully, Paul's prayer life does not refute my contention that tongues are languages.

TLC, When you jumped into this conversation (which anyone and everyone is welcome to do), you quoted my previous post. Specifically, you quoted the following: You then went on to cite Romans as a way to establish that God (the Christian God, the God of the Bible) does indeed exist. Never mind that you're using the Bible to prove the Bible (which Waysider accurately pointed out is circular reasoning: it would be like citing the Qu'ran to prove Islam). The real intellectual crime here is that you ripped my original statement from its immediate context. I expect better. Here's the full(er) quote with the preceding line. restored here with emphases added: You see, my statement was about the deist God, not the Christian God. Debunking the Christian God, from my perspective, is boatloads easier than debunking the deist God, because the Christian God makes testable claims that fail. Remember the time Jesus said he would come back before those who heard his voice died? They did, and he didn't. Enter Biblical contortionism to save the day! "Well, he didn't really mean what it looks like he meant. He used air quotes." Remember the time Paul counted himself among those who would be alive when Christ returned? Well, he (Paul) isn't, and he (Jesus) still hasn't. Remember the time God said he flooded the whole earth and saved just one family of 8? Testable claim. Genetic research would reveal a bottleneck. None exists. Because it never happened. Oh, the flood was regional? Then why ask Noah to take 120 years to build an ark when he could have given him six months warning and told him to move to another region? Remember the Exodus? History doesn't. In the USA, we have a story about how we fought for independence from the British. It's an easy story to tell, because it's true. And the more details you seek, the more you find. Which king? George III. What year? 1776. Where? We have precise locations. How does Exodus compare? When did it happen? Well, we're not really sure, historically. Which Pharoah? Funny, the story doesn't actually name the Pharoah. Fine, but SURELY there is evidence of Egypt losing a couple o'million slaves over a shockingly short period of time. Actually, there is no such account in the whole history of Egypt. Well, the Egyptians didn't record that because they were embarrassed. (WTF?) Yeah, the Bible makes all sorts of testable claims about God that fall short once you start looking at them. The deist God? Makes no claims. None. That's why he's impossible to prove or disprove. "It's like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands." That's why you constantly hear Christians (and other theists) arguing, well, if there's no God, how do you explain the universe existing? Why is there something rather than nothing? Those are terrific attempts to get an atheist to acknowledge the possibility of a god, but it's a deist god. I could say tomorrow, hey, you know what? I think I believe in the god of deism. And you will still not be even a little closer to defending the existence of the Christian God. Genesis 1? Testable claims that never happened. Exodus? Testable claims that never happened. So I'm left a little frustrated here, in this thread, because I can see that you did not carefully read even the portion of the post that you cited in order to present a verse in Romans to prove a point that, sorry, it simply doesn't prove. And then, when that's pointed out, you come along and post some drivel about allowing the Bible to be its own language, which, on top of making no rhetorical sense, is not anywhere near the topic of this thread. Come on already.

Exactly. Back to topic...