Raf

Permission granted.

Thanks, chockfull. We were posting at the same time. My one quibble with your recap, and it's just a quibble, is that Samarin was not a theologian. He was a linguist. Other than that, I think you have accurately summed up your part of the argument. It was 100 pages. We both left things out. Here's another one: Terminology became an issue because we could not agree on what various things meant, and we were all over the map about it. "Biblical SIT," "modern SIT," "free vocalization" and "glossolalia" were the terms in dispute. It didn't help that Poythress used "free vocalization" in ways that made perfect sense to him but became confusing when we tried to apply it to this conversation. For example, strip SIT (as we practiced it) of any spiritual claims, and Poythress calls it "free vocalization." Add the spiritual angle, and he calls it "T-speech." He demonstrates, I think, that T-speech is free vocalization practiced in the context of worship. They are, he claims, the same thing, mechanically. But he leaves open the idea of whether they produce different results, leaning toward saying "yes, they produce the same thing" but stopping short because to do otherwise would be to deny the possibility of God's intervention. It starts to look like "free vocalization" is a term he made up to deny SIT. That would make sense if he denied SIT, but he didn't. "Glossolalia" is what linguists call SIT. They're supposed to be synonymous. But linguists, not being bound by Biblical definitions, are free to apply the term to non-Biblical practices. So it became a little confusing for us, because we needed to be sure that linguists were talking about the same things we were. I do think we ended up agreeing on Samarin's distinction between SIT/free vocalization/glossolalia and "gibberish" [the former aim to approximate what a language should sound like; the latter does not].

I really feel underqualified to recap the other side of this argument, but I'll give it a shot. 1. Calling us all "liars" was offensive and out of line. [Conceded]. Making a blanket declaration that we all faked it overstepped the bounds of what I could possibly "know," and to state it as fact is, by implication, calling us all liars no matter how nicely I try to put it. [Conceded to a point: Calling someone a "liar" is accusing them of deliberate dishonesty. I do not believe there was anything deliberate about it. I think it was a combination of a lot of factors, including peer pressure and a genuine hunger to produce what we believed the Bible promises]. 2. "Testing" the claims of SIT assumes I am right about the claim being testable. I don't think we ever reached consensus on that. There are verses that indicate SIT will not be understood by those present, and those verses do not make exceptions for linguists. So the failure of linguists to identify languages in SIT does not prove that languages are not being produced. [All true, but I sincerely believe the claim is testable. Again, this part of the argument gave rise to the doctrinal threads, where we discussed what SIT was Biblically and whether the claim really is testable. Because it's a doctrinal difference, I concede that we cannot reach objective agreement about whether I am right about the claim being testable. The "no one understands" verse/verses were also a point of continued disagreement: there are other verses where people who witnessed SIT did understand what was spoken, so a verse that says "no one understands" cannot be applied in a blanket fashion. Understanding SIT would have to be possible, but not universal. We failed to reach agreement on this question]. 3. The value of anecdotal evidence remains in dispute. We have all heard of instances in which someone did understand what was spoken during SIT. That's evidence. [My position: that is not evidence. That is a claim that requires evidence to prove it. What we find in these anecdotes, almost universally, is that the people involved typically vanish, making confirmation impossible. Again, I believe we failed to reach consensus on this]. 4. Subjecting SIT to a test belittles God's flexibility in giving us languages that will evade detection. Many languages have gone "extinct," and we have no way of knowing what they sounded like. Even the best linguist would not be able to detect it. [My counterargument was that this could account for many instances of SIT, but could not account for all of them, and it only takes one to disprove my position. I'm sure I left some good points out.

I am totally humming the music to Les Miserables right now.

You can claim it all you want, and as long as you don't expect me to believe it, we're cool. You want to claim it by faith? I can't argue with that. But the moment you change "I can" to "I DO," you venture from a statement of faith to a statement of fact. It's not a fact. It's a claim. A testable one. And no amount of redefining speak, redefining tongues or redefining language can change the fact that the claim you're making is testable. The only thing you guys accomplish when you deny the testability of the claim (by coming up with all sorts of excuses as to why a language won't be detected) is demonstrate a profound lack of confidence that you're producing a language. But a language is what the Bible promises. That's the point of the dragon analogy: starting with a testable claim and then resorting to all sorts of mental gymnastics to make it untestable.

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