Raf

We're going in circles here. We disagree on what the Bible teaches, period. I don't see how one can honestly read Acts and Corinthians and walk away with the impression that you can produce meaningless prattle and meet the Biblical qualification for speaking in languages. It frustrates me because we're supposed to be approaching the material honestly, and I don't think you're being honest with yourself in how you're handling the material. Quite frankly, you would never let me get away with what you're trying to pull. If you want to know why I'm heated up, go back to every single post where you've complimented me. Because the person you describe in those posts is being treated like a gullible simpleton. Translation: how dumb do you think I am? Several times I suggested it would be best for me to walk away from this thread. Each time you specifically asked me substantive questions to dissuade me from doing so. I'm going to say this one last time, because it does not appear to be sinking in. I have no bleeping interest in bleeping proving that your bleeping experience is bleeping wrong. In a billion bleeping years I could never bleeping prove that your bleeping SIT is a bleeping fake. The only possible bleeping outcome that would bleeping prove your bleeping SIT is bleeping real would be for you to bleeping produce an identifiable bleeping language. That would DISPROVE my position. I am not interested in proving my position because I bleeping can't. That applies to me "proving your interpretation of your experience is wrong." STOP BLEEPING ACCUSING ME OF A BLEEPING AGENDA I DON'T BLEEPING HAVE AND THEN BLEEPING WONDERING WHY I'M GETTING BLEEPING HEATED!!! ARE. WE. CLEAR??? Good. So now, here's the way I see it. We have two competing hypotheses. Both make predictions. My prediction: modern SIT will always produce meaningless prattle, never an identifiable language. The Biblical prediction: SIT will always produce a human language in accordance with every usage of the,word glossa in the Bible. The concession of my position is that failure to identify a language spoken in SIT does not invalidate it as a language. BUT!!! Success at identifying a language spoken in SIT would verify it as not being fake. The way I see it, the other side of this discussion is doing its dead level best to make the prediction of the second hypothesis perfectly match the prediction of the first. In other words: we should expect nothing but meaningless prattle with SIT. That's not what The Word says! It's just not. And you would not be twisting definitions into Twizzler bits if you could get someone to ID the language you claim to be producing. The test is already rigged so you can't fail. But you seem just as convinced as i am that you will never PASS it. Until you do, all you've demonstrated about your SIT is that you're sincere. Or you can keep coming up with excuses for why a language will never be identified and call that a Biblical position. You can call it that. But it's not, not in any language.

This whole business about what constitutes a sign and whether the sign is supernatural is beside the point. SIT is a supernatural claim. Reducing it to a natural one is biblically untenable. It's A MANIFESTATION OF SPIRIT. Not a token of a covenant like circumcision. Not a road message that must be obeyed like a red light. A manifestation of the spirit, SUPERNATURAL BY DEFINITION. Or am I now to believe SIT is unique among manifestations in having no supernatural element whatsoever?

Nice!

Let me be clear about something, please: This is both correct and incorrect. It is absolutely correct that a person speaking in tongues MUST produce a specific, identifiable language. That is the case in I Corinthians 12-14, Acts 2 and every other usage of the word "glossa" in the Bible. Your statement is simply wrong. However, it is INCORRECT to assume that a failure to identify the language you produce disproves the authenticity of your SIT. I NEVER SAID THAT. What I said, and I was repeatedly, abundantly clear, is that unless you CAN identify the language, you cannot demonstrate your SIT is authentic. So you see the distinction, or do I need to make it clear? I CANNOT DISPROVE YOUR SIT EXPERIENCE, even if I parade you in front of every linguist in the history of the field and every single one failed to identify your language, I would still not have succeeded in discrediting your SIT. BUT YOU CAN PROVE IT! And you can do so by producing an identifiable language. When you say there's nothing in I Corinthians that says a person must produce a specific, identifiable language, you are doing two things. One, you are playing strawman with my argument. Two, you are falsely implying that Corinthians predicts something other than a language. We went through the Bible book by book. Corinthians predicts a language. That's what glossa means. You have produced not the slightest scintilla of evidence that it means anything else. The best you did was "double articulation and syntax," both of which are also elements of FAKING SIT. Took me a bit to catch up with that. I apologize for posting before I looked it up, but now that I did, it's pretty clear from the evidence. Steve, I implore you: You are changing scripture to adhere to your doctrine and practice. It should be the other way around, shouldn't it? Your doctrine and practice is your business, but our agreed upon common ground in this thread is the scripture. Does it say what it says? Steve, it does. And it does not say what YOU say.

So now I'm at the point of returning to Samarin (to demonstrate that we've been over this ground already). Samarin writes: Items B and C are irrelevant to our discussion, since B begs the question and C is self-evident (of course the speaker thinks it's a language. That's the point. But A is completely relevant if we're going to talk about "double articulation and syntax," because those features are part of phonological structure. Let's put this in plain English (a real language): When you fake speaking in tongues, you will produce something that bears a superficial resemblance to language. It will have "words." It will have "sentences." It will even have "commas" and "periods." And, yes, it will probably have "double articulation and syntax," but ony superficially so. To demonstrate actual double articulation and syntax, you'd probably have to know the language, which is the point in the first place. So glossolalia has phonemes, meaning it has double articulation. We discussed this to DEATH in the original thread. Appealing to double articulation and syntax as evidence that a "tongue" is genuine is as useless as appealing to the fact that the sound is coming from you moving your throat, your tongue, your lips. Yes, faking a language has all that in common with speaking a real language. But it's still faking a language. So not only does the Bible not speak of double articulation and syntax, even if it did, the presence of double articulation and syntax would not demonstrate anything supernatural about the practice today. Only the production of an identifiable language unknown to the speaker would demonstrate that something took place that could not have taken place without God's involvement. Injecting a modern definition of language into the Biblical usage of glossa ignores the Biblical usage of glossa, and AGAIN, the only reason you would feel the need to do such a thing is if you're not producing what a plain reading of the Bible promises! I am not trying to disprove your experience. And if you're not trying to prove it, then we're fine. But if you're trying to demonstrate that you're producing what the Bible promises, then we have to first agree on what the Bible promises. The Bible promises a language. Until you produce one, I have no reason to believe your babbling is any more authentic than mine, your sincerity and integrity notwithstanding.

I just did a quick search on Google. Not only is double articulation and syntax an element of language, it is also an element of what's called pseudo language. In other words, you can expect it to be present when a language is faked. So even if you were to demonstrate that you produce double articulation and syntax, you would still have gone no further in demonstrating that you have produced a language.

The Bible says nothing about double articulation and syntax. Can something have double articulation and syntax and still not be a language? I don't know. I haven't studied the issue that much. But I will say this. You have not demonstrated that you produce double articulation and syntax. You're merely making the claim. I don't see how sticking with the biblical usage of a term narrows its definition. I do see how going outside the Bible to expand the definition of the term gives you an unbiblical definition of the term. Your interpretation of your experiences is of no interest to me. What is of interest to me in this thread is what the Bible actually teaches. I don't see anything in the Bible about double articulation and syntax. If you want to use that as evidence that what you are producing is actually a language, be my guest. But now you have placed on yourself the burden of proving that you produce double articulation and syntax.

Anyone can go. If that anyone should be me when I get a chance, great. But don't feel obliged to wait for me.

I don't think anyone is too stubborn or set in their ways regarding PFAL, but I do think that adequately describes your loyalty to the practice of SIT. You can't be wrong, even if it means changing what the Bible teaches to conform to your practice instead of the other way around. Sorry I can't drum up a more polite way to say that.

I was speechless in any tongue.

A good question. I'm doing two things. One: I'm making my case. Which I've done. Two, I'm waiting to read an adequate rebuttal, which in my opinion has not been presented. It's not that I want my posts to accomplish something. I think that's already happened. I think I'm waiting for your proposed rebuttals to accomplish something, and in my opinion they have not. So I keep reading, thinking, aha! There's something I missed! Except that never happens. Nothing more to answer. I'll keep waiting. I'd be thrilled to see if there's a different usage of glossa other than the physical organ of the tongue and languages. Normal human languages, as was the case in every other usage of glossa in the New Testament and the presumed usage in the chapters in question until it was recognized that normal human languages were not being produced. I have called it before, and will call it again, an ad hoc ret-con of the term that had a clear definition when it was used in the Bible but did not predict the actual results. You're just trying to change the definition of glossa to get it to fit what's being produced rather than rejecting the practice because it's not producing what was predicted. I've seen nothing to dissuade me from this position. And again I'll wait.

No clue

A more succinct version is, if you think glossa in I Corinthians 12-14 means something other than language, you must be stoned.

WordWolf's correct.

In Numbers, God ordered a man to be stoned to death. So the people got together, rolled up a big fat blunt, and forced him to smoke it. They kept doing this until his heart gave out. Because, you know, God ordered the man to get stoned, and that is a possible meaning of stoned. It's not Biblical, true. But God is all knowing, so what's to stop him from projecting a future meaning onto a past event? I know, the Bible says they picked up rocks, but if we go with this stoned-as-Marijuana definition, which is perfectly valid according to the Urban Dictionary, then those rocks would stand for blunts as a metaphor. If you're spiritual and open minded, you'll see it. Otherwise, you're limiting God. Now, if you think you can read Numbers and determine that stoning him meant holding a rock concert (that is, a concerted effort to throw rocks st the guy until he died), and you're not even going to consider an alternative definition of stoned, then you've got a bad case of myopia. Any attempt to limit the definition of "stone him with stones until he dies" is doomed to fail. I am wasting my time here.

I find the Jesus-Myth theory entertaining, and it makes some rock solid points. But ultimately, I think it fails to answer more questions than the alternative (minimal historicity, which holds that there was a historical figure in there, but his biography grew in the telling).

TLC, no one has a problem drawing Wierwille apologists out. There is no need to resort to tricks. The only real challenge is getting them to shut up.

I was wondering if anyone could think of things we were taught in TWI that actually count as wisdom even now, regardless of theological agreement or disagreement. I can think of one off the top of my head: "Sincerity is no guarantee for truth." I think that is one of the most profound statements I have ever encountered. Any others?

I haven't looked at the videos here, but I've seen similar videos in the past. William Lane Craig is a frustrating debater, not because he's so good, but because his arguments contain so many fallacies and incorrect assumptions that it takes much longer than the time alloted to deconstruct his nonsense and refute it. The empty tomb, for example, is not evidence. It is a claim. The book of Acts is not evidence. It is a claim. The martyrdom of the saints is not evidence. It is a claim. But Craig does such an effective job of fallacy building that he appears to be making sense when he actually is not. We have a tendency to approach Acts as an accurate account of things that actually happened. But even when you do something as simple as compare Acts' testimony of Paul's life with Paul's own testimony of the same events in his life, you will see a conflict between story and history. Somebody's fibbing. Thousands of converts to Christianity in one day? Probably not. Not saying it's impossible, but that would be very much like all of us showing up at the Rock of Ages in 1977 and, after hearing one speech from one zealot, converting to Islam. Not bloody likely, no matter how many neat tricks the zealot performed.

So. Anyone? Anything?

By way of example: Long ago, I came to the conclusion that Wierwille was wrong to blame Job's fear for the calamity that befell him and his family. I won't go into too much detail. Wierwille cited the verse that has Job saying "The thing that I greatly feared has come upon me," and he uses that verse to assert that fear is believing in reverse, and just as we receive what we believe, we receive also what we fear. I'm summarizing. After studying the verse, along with the rest of the book of Job, I came to the conclusion that Wierwille was drawing conclusions from the text that were not to be found in the text itself. Job was a parent who had just lost his whole family. His was a cry of despair, not a presentation of doctrine. Wierwille went on to say that Job, as described in the first chapter of the book that bears his name, was fearful when he offered sacrifices just in case his children had sinned. The Bible presents Job's sacrifices as evidence of his righteousness, not evidence of his fear. After a while, I became convinced that Wierwille had simply misrepresented Job. Period. The more time passed, the less I was willing to entertain Wierwille's interpretation of the book. We argued about it on more than one thread (GSers, not anyone in particular). To death. To the point that now, I'm just not going to participate in another argument about it. After a while, you just let go of the false and you move on. I say all this not to pick on Wierwille, but to demonstrate that after you feel you've argued your position to death, it's time to move on. My position is that "tongues" in the Bible are normal human languages. I went through every verse in the Bible, checked the usage, and there is nothing to suggest otherwise. I even tackled the "difficult" verses about tongues of angels and "no man understands." There is nothing Biblical to argue against tongues as normal human languages. I've argued it to death. It's time for me to move on. You guys can continue to review anything you want. If you think it will persuade me, by all means, try. If you don't, then by all means, carry on without me. Nothing about this conversation demands my participation. Steve, I agree with your last post, but I don't see where MY beating a dead horse advances your observation one whit. I do think this has been a productive chat. I don't think my continued participation will produce anything it has not already produced. Now, if you were to produce a language... ;)

I think it's hard to get around hell Biblically. The only thing you can do is argue whether it's literal or metaphorical. I think the case for a metaphorical hell is Biblically stronger than a literal one, but that's just my opinion.

I just thought it was amusing. Look, we disagree. I'm good with that. Show me Biblically why I'm wrong and I'll reconsider, if you even want me to. You don't owe me that.

Understood

Well, considering that I'm not claiming spirituality, it's hard to take that as an insult. I do find it amusing that if I were to agree with you, the accusation of intellectualism and egotism would probably vanish. It's a safe way to dismiss an opposing position. Call it vain and unspiritual. Meanwhile, I've taken the vain and unspiritual position of showing exactly what the Bible says and nothing more. What you can't do is call my position unbliblical. Well, you can do that. But you can't demonstrate it. My position remains quite Biblically sound. And "new perspectives" that cover the same old ground are not "new" at all, in my opinion. So please, have fun exploring more. I look forward to what you can come up with (which, I will repeat, you would not be doing if you produced a language as the Bible promises).