Raf

Off-topic, but the problem with the "serpent" just being a nickname as opposed to the actual animal appears to be Gen 3:15, which just doesn't make sense unless we're talking about a (very poorly understood) snake.

Steve, You wrote too much for me to respond to without becoming overbearing, so I'm going to be a bit selective. Forgive me if I don't address everything, but I sincerely believe I've "been there and done that" with the majority of what you raised, and I don't see the point in going through it again. But I'm going to say THIS for, hopefully, the last time. I do not feel obliged to prove your experience was not/is not authentic. I don't feel the need. I believe you're faking it as surely as I was, and I have demonstrated, over and over and over again, how easy it is. I have outlined the mechanics and shown beyond any reasonable doubt that faking it is easy and that it fits the evidence. The only reason "prove it" became a mantra on the thread that inspired this one is that it was demanded of me, not that I voluntarily engaged in a concerted effort to debunk any individual's experience. I am under no obligation to prove that anyone does not speak in tongues. The way claims and proof work is, when someone makes an affirmative claim, it is that person's burden to prove that claim. I have not made an affirmative claim. My claim denies your affirmative claim. Namely: If I told you I have a fire-breathing dragon in my garage, it is not your burden to prove I don't. You can amass all the evidence you want about how non-credible my claim is, but you can never disprove it. But why should you? I'm the one making the claim. It should be my job to prove it. That's what's happened here. We have all made the claim, "I can speak in tongues." Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that my claim was false and the suspicion that so was everyone else's. I no longer make the claim. But I did speak, and sounds did come out of my mouth. So what could account for that? Well, I faked it. That's still not an affirmative claim. It's merely an extension of my denial of the affirmative claim. So, I faked it. And I think you did too. Now, I can't prove it, anymore than you can prove there's no fire-breathing dragon in my garage. But just as you can amass tons of evidence that I don't have such a creature in my garage, I amassed tons of evidence that SIT as practiced is faked. I showed the mechanism for fakery. I showed how our gullibility led us to believe it was real. And I established Biblical criteria for what real SIT would look like. It wasn't complicated. Real SIT will produce a language, every time. And I demonstrated that study after study after study failed to demonstrate that SIT produces an actual language, ever. Note, I only did that in response to demands that I prove my position, not because I "felt the need" to do so. So you feel you can easily prove I don't have a fire-breathing dragon in my garage if I give you access to my garage. Show me the dragon. But I'm more clever than that. You see, my dragon is invisible, so you won't be able to see it. Ah, you say, I'll throw a blanket over it. That way you'll be able to see where the dragon is, even if you can't see it. But I'm still too clever. My dragon is intangible also. So you can't see it, and if you throw paint or a blanket or anything on it, it will just pass right through him and land on the floor. You can't prove my dragon doesn't have those qualities! Now you have to get smart. You have this tricorder, see, and it can detect all light forms. It can also detect variations in temperature readings, so the presence of a fire-breathing dragon will be detected in a number of ways. Unfortunately, you failed to account for the fact that an invisible, intangible dragon can certainly breathe fire that does not raise temperature. I mean, you believe in a fire that surrounded a bush without burning it. Surely if you had tried to take the temperature of that flame, it would not have been unusually high, because otherwise the burning bush would have been consumed, right? So you cannot disprove that I have an invisible, intangible dragon in my garage that produces non-thermal heat, especially if you're using a tricorder that hasn't been calibrated to detect such a life form, no matter how many life forms that tricorder has been calibrated to detect. So my claim that I have a fire-breathing dragon in my garage stands because you can't disprove it. Because it's invisible. And intangible. And non-thermal. And you don't have the tools to detect it. And the tools you think you have are inadequate to the task. That is what has happened with this discussion. You say, "I can speak in tongues." Fine, I say. I go to the Bible and walk through every usage of tongues to show, in context, that tongues means languages. It doesn't mean codes. It doesn't mean the way dolphins "speak" to each other. Just walk through the Bible. So speaking in tongues means speaking in languages. "No it doesn't. It can mean a lot of things." Um. No. It means languages. "Well, just because you don't understand the language doesn't mean it's not a language." Fair enough. Let's bring linguists in. "Linguists can miss tons of languages that they haven't been exposed to." Fine. Let's bring LOTS of linguists in. As many as we can muster. "But they won't know dead languages. And they surely won't know tongues of angels. Or the language the serpent spoke to Eve." It's invisible! It's intangible! It's non-thermal! You don't have the tools to detect it! You know, after a while, I think you're justified in concluding, in the absence of real evidence, that I just don't have a dragon in my garage, no matter how sincere I am about it. The evidence isn't there. If I'm going to convince you that I have a dragon in my garage, the only thing I can do is show you the damn dragon. If you're going to convince me that you're really speaking in tongues, then identify the language. Because after a while, I think I'm justified in concluding, in the absence of real evidence, that you just aren't speaking in tongues, no matter how sincere you are about it. And no matter how much you assert that I can't prove you're not. I don't have to prove you're not. I'm not the one making a claim. You are. So back up your claim with evidence or acknowledge that I am justified in my skepticism, whether you share it or not. All you guys are doing with your word play about languages and codes of communication, etc, is redefining the invisible dragon until I give up and concede I can't disprove it. I'll save you the trouble. I can't disprove it. Nor should I have to. Speaking in tongues was a perfectly testable claim until you defined away all aspects of it that make it testable. And please note, nothing I have written in this post presumes the non-existence of God. There are dozens of explanations for the failure of SIT to produce a language that do not involve God being a myth. Does your inability to curse a fig tree and have it wither overnight disprove God's existence? No. Neither should your inability to produce a language. I've been sitting back and watching this conversation's resurrection and thinking to myself, no one wants to go to the trouble of re-reading a 107-page thread that got awfully contentious (for which, again, I take full responsibility). It's just, gosh, watching you guys twist yourselves into pretzels to avoid what I think is the clear scriptural conclusion here would be laughable if it were not so frustrating. It would be one thing if I hadn't addressed these points repeatedly. But I have. Rephrasing them doesn't make the dragon materialize in my garage. And it doesn't turn your utterances into a language. And no, I don't have to prove it. You're the one claiming to produce a language. You prove it. "Ok, I'll prove it. But first, let us define 'language.'" Sheesh, if that's what was sold to us in PFAL (or wherever we bought this doctrine), we never would have believed it. A claim that's proved cannot be denied. A claim that's NOT proved, can be denied. You're making the claim. If you want me to believe it, prove it. I feel no need whatsoever to disprove what you have never proved in the first place. P.S. The invisible dragon in the garage is Carl Sagan's allegory/metaphor, not my own.

The point of this thread is to discuss free vocalization OUTSIDE THE CONTEXT OF SIT. It has nothing to do with SIT. That's why it's not in doctrinal. That's why it's not in About the Way. It belongs here and was only resurrected for ease of accessibility.

I made a concerted effort to not have this thread be doctrinal. It's about practice, not doctrine, and it does not challenge doctrine in the slightest. VPW taught us how to fake it. I think I've established that beyond a reasonable doubt. All that said, Modkirk, I think, considering how it was hashed, rehashed, got out of hand (for which I take sole responsibility) and blissfully slept for quite a while, it might be best to move it to Questioning Faith, where people who are interested in the topic have recently resurrected it. I leave that to your judgment. [p.s. Not that it's necessary, as I think it's pretty clearly water under the bridge at this point, but I would again like to apologize to Chockfull for my conduct in this thread, as well as to anyone else who was offended by my approach to the subject matter. That is entirely my responsibility. I do not apologize for the subject matter, however. That s--- is fair game. ;)]

I like to say that the religions disagree with each other about the same God. Historically, we're talking about the same God. Theologically, we are most certainly not. Christianity generally adheres to the Trinity. Jews do not accept that. To tell a Jewish that he worships the same God as most Christians is, theologically speaking, an insult. Likewise, to tell most Christians that they worship the same God as Islam, which rejects the divinity of Christ, is an insult. To the outside observer, they worship the same God but disagree with each other vehemently about his will, his plan and his attributes.

True and false. There is no paradox.. If not for theism, there would be no need to define atheism. Similarly, there is no need to label those who do not believe in fairies, goblins, wizardry and astrology. However, using the word "parasite" is misleading. Are non-Muslims parasites feeding off Islam? Are non-Bigfootists parasites off believers in Sasquatch? Theism is a belief in a god or gods. Atheism is the absence of that belief (in someone with the capacity to believe it). It is not a system of beliefs. It merely answers one question: "do you believe in god/gods?" And that answer is no. Bolshevik, I'll answer more of your comments later, but just because we have barely interacted does not mean I have not read your posts directed at other people. I find you generally likable and coherent. My comments were not intended to be antagonistic and I apologize if, in my clumsiness, they came off that way.

If a follower of another religion were going through this many logical contortions and definition expansions to justify the failure of his claim to produce it's promised results, we would all reject the claim without hesitation. Ever hear a Mormon try to explain why his holy book has zero archaeological evidence to back it up? That's what this conversation sounds like.

So I assume you can tell us exactly where this road is, where it led from and to, the names of the streets, the date of the blizzard, etc? I mean, you should be able to document every element of the story except for the fact that you saw the nonexistent poles. The more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence required to believe it. You'll forgive me if I don't just take your word for it. I mean, Muslims have similar miracle stories, as do ESP mediums, UFO enthusiasts, Bigfoot hunters, etc. What may be evidence to you is merely a claim to anyone else, a claim that requires evidence if you expect anyone to believe it. Plenty of witnesses attest to, well, unbelievable things all the time. We dismiss most without investigation because the claims are so absurd. Nice story, and you don't need to prove it to anyone. Don't get me wrong. But if you want me to BELIEVE it, well...

Awesome.

Tongues are languages. Speaking in tongues is speaking in languages. To think that you can speak in tongues without producing a language is to inject a definition into the Bible instead of allowing it to speak for itself. And that improvised definition would not be necessary if you were demonstrably producing what the Bible promises in the first place. Who are linguists to decide what's a language. Seriously? Who are biologists to decide what a cell is? Who are astronomers to tell what a star is? Could you imagine Acts 2, how the people would have reacted if the apostles produced something other than recognizance human languages? They would have giggled their butts off. And the apostles would have been like, "Who are YOU to say it's not a language?" Like it's everyone else's job to prove it's NOT. News flash: if you're the one claiming it IS genuine, then it's your task to prove it's a language. You should be calling in as many linguists as possible to get as wide a breadth of knowledge as you can to ID the language, not coming up with excuses for why they'll fail before they even start. And for the last time, when you take one position for decades, reconsider and change your mind based on overwhelming evidence, the new position you take is NOT A PRESUPPOSITION. It is the OPPOSITE of a presupposition, and disingenuously calling it a presupposition to discredit it does not make it a presupposition.

Has it occurred to anyone that we wouldn't be trying so desperately to explain why speaking in tongues never produces languages if speaking in tongues actually produced languages?

I think you intended to post that on a different topic.

This is getting tiresome. Make up your mind. You asked me to explain changes. I gave a generic response. It changes in a believer's meeting because you're aware you're in a believer's meeting and you change it. No supernatural explanation required. Produce a language and I'll be forced to modify my post-supposition.

The explanation is that you're making it all up. It's changing because you're changing. You're exposed to different sounds coming from different languages that you encounter in your travels, in the things you see and hear, in the things you read, or in your natural ability to think and juxtapose different letters and combinations in your head. Produce a language and I need to change my post-supposition.

You're free to check here. Don't get me wrong. I just think the nature of your question is such that you'll find the answers you seek elsewhere.

Ok. I'm not overly concerned. Both our points are made. Carry on.

Prop A was very tentatively worded. I don't get how you can call it a blanket statement seeing as it only talks about how things appear.

On what basis do you disagree with proposition A, which makes no doctrinal claims and merely observes and recites a fact?

It only matters when assessing vpw's credibility and integrity as a researcher and representative of God. He failed to meet the standards of scholarship while holding himself up as a scholar (implied by his use of the honorific "Doctor"). And he was dishonest, a quality that conflicts with the notion that he was a man of God. As to the quality of the content, it matters not one whit.

I'll take "Threads that no one wants to see resurrected" for $2,000, Alex.

I really have no desire to rehash the old conversation except to answer MRAP's question and, seriously, suggest that you should take the question elsewhere. Not to protect the integrity of this thread, but because I have nothing new to add.

MRAP, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but seeing as this thread is what it is, and where it is, I'm going to gently recommend you ask your question in one of the SIT threads in the main doctrinal section, where it really seems more at home. My answer is you faked it. You were taught to fake it and you have concocted a slew of excuses for why it doesn't produce what the Bible promises: a known human language. The most obvious answer is that you're not producing languages, but that doesn't square with your faith. From my perspective, I have offered an explanation that perfectly describes our shared experience, though it doesn't fit a bunch of predictably unsubstantiated claims about visitors from West Bubbahump who recognized the language and then went back to West Bubbahump, never to be seen again. A likely story. From a Christian perspective, I think an exploration of what you're all doing is necessary because it doesn't seem to match what the Bible says will happen. From MY perspective, I predict you'll never produce what the Bible says, and I don't see where an unbeliever is obliged to explain anything when I've already offered an explanation that fits the facts. Produce a language and I have some explaining to do. Don't produce a language? Talk among yourselves. Stay right here.

For what it's worth, I'm really restraining myself in terms of pulling the "get back on topic" card, but seeing as this thread was dormant for so long and, I think, there is so little desire to resurrect the SIT thread, I'm just exercising patience. If another mod wants to jump in, I'm good with that.

No. Just excuses. You wouldn't have to think outside the box if SIT delivered on its claims.

Yes, once you verify that it's a language, you have to verify that it was unknown to the speaker. Once you have done both, you've pretty much confirmed the only explanation is supernatural. "Product of the devil"? No, you're not opening a can of worms. The can is empty. Relax. Excuses, excuses, excuses.