Raf

Apparently I didn't hammer the dragon analogy hard enough, because you somehow missed the point. "I DO speak in tongues" = "I DO have a dragon on my garage." You're making a testable claim, and until you demonstrate that you're producing a language, your claim has not passed the test. A claim is not validated by the intensity with which it is asserted. Why should I believe you DO speak in tongues when what you produce is no different than what I produced when I was faking it? Do you not agree that I have no basis to believe your claim until you produce the Biblically promised result, which IS a language?

Reading through WordWolf's summary of his own involvement in the original thread, I seem to recall a general agreement that the Biblical results of TIP would not be "testable" in the same sense that SIT was, so while we discussed it, we really didn't argue about it all that much. At least, in comparison. There was a lot of disagreement over whether SIT is a testable claim. That's what gave rise to the doctrinal threads that were supposed to be about what Biblical SIT actually is.

No pressure. Dag.

Personally disappointed in my failure to overcome my bias. I'll add more when I have time.

Equivocation is FINE as long as you're not doing it maliciously and you're clear enough so that everyone can follow along. I equivocated in the opening post. The writer of Proverbs equicovated in the "Answer/Answer not a fool" verses. It can be a clever way to get people to think. Here's my personal favorite: I have no problem with public displays of religion, but I do have a serious problem with public displays of religion." If you don't know I'm equivocating, that sentence makes no sense. [interpretation: I have no problem with people proclaiming their faith wherever they see fit, on street corners, on the bus or train, CERTAINLY inside AND outside churches, etc. I only have a problem with government displays of religion. Government has no business promoting one religion over another. I won't post a "There is no God" sign at a government run hospital. Keep your 10 Commandments out of a government run courthouse. See what I did there? Changed the meaning of the word "public" from the first sentence to the second].

I did this on my own, without consulting the other mods. They can smack my hand if I'm out of line, but let me outline my reasoning. 1. The original thread is here: LINK! It is too long for anyone to reasonably be expected to read it all and catch up on it, and recapping after more than 100 pages is only useful if you know where the recap is. The recap will be in this post, with the opportunity for others to recap if their memories differ from mine. 2. The original thread got ugly. Recapping here allows us to remove the ugliness while keeping the many salient points that were made on both sides. The Recap The thread started with me confessing that I'd faked SIT all along. In addition, I said I made up interpretations and prophecies on the spot. I referred to it as "reinforced self-deception," where TWI encouraged us to participate in a fundamentally dishonest practice to build community. We all did it. My choice of language was highly divisive. Folks thought I was accusing everyone of lying. In actuality, my feeling was that we were all deceived and walked out on it, in good faith believing that what we were doing is genuine. But I used the word lie, and I own that. So to clarify: I think we fooled ourselves, were encouraged by others to fake it [in good faith: most of them thought it was real, too], and were told that we weren't faking it as part of the initiation. TWI made a compelling Biblical case, and we wanted what the Bible promised. As the conversation progressed, people felt a need to defend their faith, practice and integrity. They also disagreed with me on whether everyone was/is faking it. From there, it became a question of who had the burden of proof. Is it the person claiming to produce something supernatural, or the one claiming it's all a fake? To this day, I don't think we reached a consensus. But I think there was general agreement about my observation that my thesis, "It's all fake," cannot be proved. To do so, I would have to record every instance of SIT, ever, and prove beyond a doubt that it's not a language. It is not reasonable to expect me to do that. BUT!!!!! Disproving my thesis should be easy. Produce a language. You do that, and I'm wrong, end of story. As far as me demonstrating my position (not proving it), we got into a lengthy discussion about scholarship on the subject. Many works were cited, but the two that drew the most comments were from linguist William Samarin and another gentleman whose credentials I no longer remember. His name was Vern Poythress. Poythress was fascinating because he is (was?) a believer who never discounted the possibility of genuine SIT. Samarin's position was secular. Summarizing him is easy: SIT does not produce languages. What it does produce is similar to language in a number of ways, but the similarities are superficial. It's not gibberish (goo-goo-ga-ga, bliggety, bloggety, boo!). It is supposed to simulate language, and as such, it will have a diverse "vocabulary" and pauses similar to what you would encounter while reading and coming across a comma or period. SIT produces not just words, but sentences and paragraphs. But, he said repeatedly, it doesn't produce language. There was lots of disagreement, some of it contentious, about what Samarin was and was not saying. Poythress took Samarin's work a little further and described a typical "first experience" with SIT. What he described was remarkably similar to Session 12 of PFAL. Relax. Speak. Uncomfortable at first, but soon it will be as easy as riding a bicycle. And this was very important: the instructor would tell the speaker not to doubt. "If he says, 'I seem to be doing it myself,' the 'coach' replies, 'That’s the devil trying to make you doubt the gift that God has given you.'" It was Poythress who coined the term "free vocalization," which I subsequently adopted. I'll let him define it: Again, it needs to be stressed that Poythress was/is not a doubter. He merely considered SIT a testable claim and found that it didn't produce languages. I'm leaving a LOT out for the sake of brevity (100-page thread, people!). Here's Poythress' article. Go to town. I don't think it's necessary to go into more than that for the sake of summary, but again I must insist: I have not done Poythress justice. He refers to my position as "unbiblical." I actually disagree with that. Which brings us to the issue of presuppositions and why I did not reveal during the course of this thread that I am no longer a believer. There are numerous Christian denominations that teach SIT is a thing of the past and not possible today. There is no difference between what those Christians believe about modern SIT and what I believe about it (with the exception that those Christians might believe there's something demonic at work, whereas I most certainly do not). Point is, you do not need to be a non-Christian to conclude modern SIT is a $3 bill. I wanted this issue discussed on the merits. My lack of faith in other areas was not relevant. In fact, I had come to my conclusion about SIT years before I lost my faith in other aspects of Christianity. I chose to save atheism for a later discussion. SIT could be discussed on its own, on the merits, without a loss of faith in those who came to agree with me. A couple of other brief points before I wrap up this summary: I cannot prove everyone faked it. I never tried. I only tried to document the claims I was making, and in doing so encountered a mechanism for "faking it" that I think holds up to scrutiny. I think the mechanism for faking SIT is free vocalization as described by Poythress, which anyone can do. I think the mechanism for faking interpretation and prophecy is extemporaneous speech, which, again, anyone can do. With a little practice, you can get very good at it. It doesn't mean you plot out every word you're going to say. It just means you know your subject matter and you're able to speak about it without pre-planning. People do this in speech classes all the time. The reason this was in About the Way and not in doctrinal was outlined in the first post: I believe these "manifestations" were TWI's way of creating group cohesion through a shared experience that appeared to be supernatural but on closer examination was anything but. Throughout anything I said in the previous thread or here, if I have stated anything as fact when it is merely my opinion, I apologize. I am declaring all of this to be my opinion. This summary is unintentionally one-sided. Nobody's perfect. I invite any original thread participants who want to elaborate on their opposition to my thesis to please do so.

Biblically, "The Great Principle" is neither great nor a principle. There's nothing in the Bible to articulate it or substantiate it. If our spirit can communicate with your mind, then God's spirit can communicate with your mind.

I have faith in lots of things. None involve religion. I have faith in my wife's loyalty, for example. Can't prove it, but don't need to. In my experience, it got to the point in studying the Bible that I came to the conclusion that having faith and believing in something were synonymous terms. They're not. I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. That doesn't take faith. So many disasters would have to take place for me to be wrong about that, the fact that I was wrong would be the least of our worries. Not necessarily. Having faith in Islam and shifting to Christianity would take faith. Having faith in Islam and dropping it does not require shifting faith. It requires abandoning it. You don't "have faith" in things you can prove or demonstrate. You just know those things.

If I put my mod hat back on right now, I would totally declare a mic-drop and lock the thread right there.

Ok, it's later. The thread topic was meant to be open, not hypothetical. The opening post was supposed to reflect the fact that folks will answer the question differently depending on how they define their terms. That's why I spent some time early on showing various definitions. It's not "trying to have it both ways." It's "willing to see it from different angles." I have encountered those who believe atheism takes as much faith as Christianity, if not more. That is nonsense. But it's nonsense that's based on equivocation about the meanings of "faith" and "believing." That's why it's important to agree on what those terms mean before proceeding with the discussion. Simply put, if it takes faith to believe something, then it does not take faith to disbelieve it. Etc.

Those are hilarious.

The correlations are statistical. People who identify as atheist tend to believe other things as well. Those beliefs are not guaranteed, however. For exampke, if you are atheists, it is likely, statistically, that you don't believe in ghosts. But you can believe in ghosts and be atheist. You can believe in reincarnation and be atheist. It's just less likely. You can be atheist and anti-abortion. Really. Look it up. More later

Dupe

MRAP, if you can idolize a book that says answer not a fool according to his folly right before/after it instructs you to answer a fool according to his folly, then I have to assume you can get through an entire post that uses an obvious device like immediate contradiction for effect. Either that, or I owe you an apology for overestimating your ability to get the point.

Chris Geer used to teach that Allah was Baal. Look, in the 70s, long before 9/11, the fundies were adamant that we in TWI did not worship the same God as Christianity, so I think in lots of circles that offense would have predated 9/11. But yeah, it probably became more widespread after that.

Ok, TLC. We're in doctrinal. This thread is supposed to be about what Biblical SIT is. We really shouldn't be entertaining my skepticism. No more invisible dragons. My point has been made anew.

When someone says "atheism is a religion," I find that the best follow-up question is, "what do you mean by that?" The answer to that question allows for an exploration of what ideas are truly being asserted. By itself, atheism is not a religion. As I've noted, it is one answer to one question. But atheism is rarely by itself. There are correlated ideas that frequently accompany it, and there are those who sincerely believe those ideas are "religious." I contend that they are not, that they merely answer some of the same questions that were once the exclusive domain of religion. Why are we here? Atheists' answer: There is no "reason." We just are. How did we get here? Atheists' answer: It's a long story. Sit down for a bit. This is going to take a while. What is the meaning of life? Atheists' answer: There is none, but there is lots of meaning in life. The trick is to recognize what I've stated in the previous paragraph as possible answers of atheists, but they are not answered by atheism itself. You can be an atheist and a socialist, communist or capitalist. You can be atheist and gay or straight. You can be atheist and be humanist or nihilist. The sky's the limit. The only thing you can't be as an atheist is theist.

It was right here in this thread all along.

Do you have any evidence that the serpent did something other than "speak"? This whole dance of "what was the form of the serpent's communication" strikes me as more excuses for why we don't see a dragon. No, Sagan was not a Christian. But that does not invalidate his illustration. It stands whether he was a non-theist, a Scientologist, a Muslim or a Buddhist. I don't know where my verse-by-verse breakdown of the word "tongue" was posted. I have no interest in digging it up at this point. If someone else remembers, kindly copy and paste it here instead of reviving yet another dormant thread. And, yes, you did just "nuh uh" the notion that tongues = languages. I see no verses to support any alternate hypothesis, and certainly no exploration of the verses in question.

Fair enough

It's abundantly clear. Thank you. And as I said, this is equivocating on what it means to "exist." The existence of believers establishes that the concept of God exists, but it doesn't establish that he objectively exists. Similarly, the existence of my 4-year-old establishes that the concept of Santa Claus and the Sandman exist, but it doesn't mean Santa Claus and the Sandman objectively exist. I addressed the first part. As for the second, I have no intention of burning anyone at the stake for disagreeing with me. There is no "baiting" going on here. Just a frequently asked question that I elected to make into a thread. I would like for my positions and arguments to be judged on their merits, not because they're coming from an atheist. SIT and the presence of errors in the Bible can be explored honestly without necessitating the conclusion that there is no God. Bolshevik originally wrote: "The atheism question more politics to figure out who's team you're on. (Are you on my team, in my division, conference or league or worse?)" I didn't understand what that meant, and I called the comment incoherent. After reading the explanation, I think it's just missing a punctuation mark or another word. "The atheism question: More politics to figure out who's team you're on. (Are you on my team, in my division, conference or league or worse?)" OR "The atheism question is more politics to figure out who's team you're on. (Are you on my team, in my division, conference or league or worse?)" I think I would have understood your point better had you done that. Just a suggestion. Raf

And I'm a little taken aback that you would presume "no amount of evidence would suffice," which is an insult. This is what I mean elsewhere when I say that unbelievers can not possibly disrespect the Bible more than the Bible disrespects unbelievers. If you don't want to prove your claim, you don't have to. If you don't want me to believe your claim, then by all means, don't prove it. But don't assault my character by falsely asserting there is no amount of evidence I would accept. That position is haughty and arrogant as hell, whether it came to you or whether it's a scriptural citation.

TLC, you are so late on the scene with that particular observation/claim that it's not even funny. I came to my assertion after painstakingly going over every relevant verse in the New Testament and demonstrating its consistency. You're going to have to do a little bit better than "nuh-uh" to refute it. And why am I the only one here taking the Bible at its word on the subject instead of redefining it beyond recognition? It's like they don't even read my posts. Yes, I understand, it's invisible and non-corporeal, intangible, and my tricorder isn't calibrated to detect it." Anything but admit there's no dragon.

"No amount of evidence would suffice" is a rather convenient way of absolving yourself of the responsibility to produce evidence to substantiate your claim.

I stopped reading after the first sentence, TLC. As long as you don't cite the incident as evidence of anything, I have no quarrel with the story. Peace.