Raf

Heh heh heh. Superman II

I don't see why not. A lot of edits in post 1430 between the time I first posted and now. If anyone read before, it might behoove you to read again.

We have a winner! Tony Stark gets thrown in prison because he too closely resembles Louis XIV. He's rescued by the Three Musketeers. Um, Four Musketeers.

I'm not sure where Chockfull stands on free vocalization as an innate human ability at this point. My last two posts were written on the assumption that he is finding a more sensible position here. I still think he's making a mistake assuming the non-Christian xenoglossia described by Samarin to be true, when in reality Samarin appears to be calling them all out as faked BS. Just because I SAY I got a message from my spirit guide and it was in Middle English, doesn't mean I did, and doesn't mean it was Middle English. In fact, if you KNOW Middle English and are able to determine that my utterance was NOT Middle English, you would have the only testable indication available that the first half of my story, that I got this utterance from my spirit guide, was horse manure. Albert Le Baron's story is horse manure. No one should be upset that a person who pretended to get a message from his spirit guide turned out to be a fraud. In fact, I would venture to say the opposite is true: we're on firm ground EXPECTING such horse manure to be horse manure. Not to dismiss it out of hand, but at least wait for proof and recognize proof to the contrary when you see it. (And when he gives you a language to check, you check, and it ain't that language, that's not just evidence. That's proof). I have no problem lumping faked mediums, faked SIT and real free vocalization into the same linguistic category (the last one being a natural explanation and the first two being attempts to portray that natural explanation as something it is not). But the very possibility of this appears to upset Chockfull so much that he is more willing to dispense with the true, documentable and self-evident reality of free vocalization rather than the phony, unproved and evidence-free UNreality of faked SIT and xenoglossia. And I deliberately used faked SIT in that previous paragraph to distinguish it from real SIT, which, if it exists, doesn't seem to be showing up in any of these studies.

As long as you do not include all SIT or all alleged demonstrations of spiritual power in the definition of ” all its forms,” I don't see why anyone would object.

Socks asked for outlandish stories. Read the flipping opening post. ;)

I agree. I stand by what I did last night. I do not stand by my decision to do it myself instead of waiting for someone else. I agree. Sentence one: thank you. Sentence two: thank you, but I'm not sure I agree. I would not argue with mod status being revoked for that infraction. Up to the rest of the mods. Sentence three: I have reported posts when I felt it necessary, just as any other participant would. And I have left it to other mods to take appropriate action. But my threshold for revocation of mod status is lower than yours. So yes, you would be completely justified in calling for such a thing and grounds a lot less severe than what you describe, in my opinion.

The scientific method, as you have cited it, applies when you are testing a hypothesis. It does not apply to classification (unless you want to break it down into microsteps, in which case the scientific method is applied at every step. But I don't think that's what you meant). If you have a leaf or a berry and don't know what kind of tree or bush it fell from, you look at the characteristics of the leaf you DO have and you compare it to the leaves and berries from known trees and bushes. Boring when you're talking about maple leaves. A little more interesting when you're talking about poison ivy. And vital when you're thinking of eating that berry you just picked up in the Alaskan wilderness (see: Into the Wild). You don't want a reasonable confidence interval that the berry is not poisonous. You want Certainty that it is not. Classification CAN and DOES prove identification, all the time. It's not a case of mixed-and-matched terminology to suggest something is proved just because the scientific method of hypothesis testing was not explicitly employed to properly classify the unknown item you are seeking to identify. If I have 95% confidence that a berry I found in the woods is not poisonous, I'm not eating it. 99%, maybe, if the only other alternative is starving. But rest assured: every step involved in classifying an unknown item utilizes the scientific method, just on a smaller scale than what you describe (If it's a maple leaf, it should look nothing like a pine needle. Hey! It looks just like a pine needle! It's not a maple leaf. Boom: next hypothesis). Listen, we can remove "this is proven" from this conversation the moment you stop falsely accusing me of misapplying such an assertion. I haven't done it. Stop saying I have. I have an opinion that I have, from time to time, stated as fact (as you have as well, as anyone in a discussion involving disagreement is wont to do). I have never said that opinion was proven. You need to get over that. Look it up: in NONE of the examples you cited of me expressing my opinion as fact did I ever refer to that opinion as proved. Correct in theory. We're just looking for the one case where they are able to make a match. THIS is an honest question. Kudos. Once you start using phonemes, it's not hard to narrow down the list of available languages. Take the CH sound in Channukah. There are oodles of languages in which that phoneme does not exist. You can rule them out. The phonemic structure narrows down the potential list of languages to match against. Ultimately, you're down to a few where the utterance can be tested against the actual language. The researchers never seen to get this far. They keep coming back to the primary language of the speaker, with maybe a few extra phonemes thrown in and accounted for by the speaker's exposure to other languages. Yes, the phonemic strata of English does match other languages. But not so many that it is impossible to check. If English and, say, Esperanto are a phonetic match, and the sample matches both phonemically, you just need to check the utterance against those languages for which there IS a match. So far, no luck. We have a description of one case that does not fit this model. It was rejected as a language, but on what grounds? I want it to be rejected as a language. I am reassured to some degree that the researcher did so. But I don't know his basis. He has given me reason to think he erred. Need more input. More data will determine whether that one case proves me wrong or fails to prove me wrong. Nothing can prove me right. Nothing can ever prove a null hypothesis right, and THIS subject doesn't lend itself to the kind of testing you described earlier, for reasons stated. By the way, re-read page 56 of Samarin. It doesn't answer your question in its entirety, but it gives you some indication that the community of linguists is a shade more confident of its ability to detect languages than you are.

Respectfully, when you reject free vocalization as an innate human ability, then you deny the human ability to "(make) up sounds that could sound a little more like language." Because that is a big part of what free vocalization IS. So if you're saying now that SIT can be faked with no spiritual implications, we are back on common ground and can continue the discussion on logical terms. But that is NOT what you said before. The problem you're having is that you're doing exactly what you accuse US of doing: using circular reasoning to affirm that the utterances which are CLAIMED to be spirit-energized really ARE spirit-energized, then blasting the researchers for not being able to tell their output apart. It's rational and likely that the researchers can't tell the output apart because there's no difference in the output. Now, if one of these things were producing a known language, THAT would be a different output. But to get angry because Samarin can't tell an alleged case of xenoglossia from an alleged case of glossolalia? Rather than think both of them are faking it by free vocalizing, your default presumption is Samarin can't tell a devil spirit from a holy spirit and free vocalization is merely a label applied to his failure? That's ridiculous. Samarin is looking at the output. He's TOLD there's a distinction. He sees none. Ya think it's remotely possible it might maybe be because there is none? A. Human beings are capable of stringing sounds together and, consciously or not, trying to make them sound like languages. That is an independent fact which you have basically just acknowledged. B. Human beings claim to SIT. The spiritual energy behind it cannot be tested. The output can. There is nothing in the output that distinguishes it from free vocalization linguistically (Poythress). C. Human beings have claimed xenoglossia through non-Christian means. The spiritual energy behind it cannot be tested. The output can. The opinion of the linguist we are reviewing fails to find any distinction between those utterances and SIT (Samarin), and SIT produces nothing that distinguishes it from free vocalization (Poythress). This proves nothing. It merely demonstrates that to the extent we are able to review actual samples, they're all producing the same thing, linguistically. In other words, the concept (not the term) of free vocalization is a natural phenomenon, nothing extraordinary about it, that appears to account for the tested claims of glossolalia and a couple of tested claims of non-Christian xenoglossia. No one has put forth the hypothesis that all non-Christian xenoglossia is free vocalization. I'd be willing to bet that's true, but I'm having enough trouble with glossolalia, thank you very much. It's not that free vocalization was coined in order to lump these things under one umbrella. Rather, the properties of these different phenomena, recognized as producing the same result, were labeled by Poythress in the terms of their least common denominator: free vocalization as an innate human ability. Poythress did not equate SIT and free vocalization. I did that. That's my hypothesis. It is not proved. I never said it was. I have said that the research has failed to find linguistic distinctions between SIT and free vocalization (which Poythress almost reluctantly admits), and pointed to that as evidence in support of my hypothesis (which Poythress most certainly does not concede). But that's not the same thing as me saying "I proved it! I proved it!" I can't prove it. I've said that from the beginning. Poythress further subdivides free vocalization into separate categories. The only observable distinction between SIT (which he calls T-Speech) and competent (and spirit-free) free vocalization is the setting in which it is produced. It's not a measurement of a difference in output. It's an acknowledgment of a difference in location and mentality of input. He could not point to a difference in output, and only suggests the difference may exist, undetectably, on theological grounds. He leaves science when he makes such an assertion. He's writing an article on faith for a theological publication, so he's entitled to do that. But when he does, he leaves the realm of science and detached, unbiased observation. That's why I originally labeled Poythress "ridiculously biased." That was unfair on my part, because I assumed this was a work of unbiased research rather than a work of theological interpretation. As a work of theological interpretation, Poythress' paper is quite UNbiased. It refuses to equate two phenomena when all observable indicators point to (not PROVE, point to) their equality. Does the lack of a linguistic distinction between some cases of xenoglossia (not reviewed separately as a subject in this thread) and free vocalization mean there's no such thing as devil spirits? No. It only means that Le Baron LIED when he claimed to produce a known, human language. He did no such thing. When his output was analyzed, it was determined to NOT be a known, human language (Samarin). It should be noted that Samarin did not review a summary of the Le Baron story. He reviewed the actual output. (Read the flipping report). Samarin DID review a summary of another story of non-Christian xenoglossia. And he couched his finding there in terms that should be acceptable to all of us: "In addition to speaking and writing in two 'languages,' using a non-Roman orthography of her invention, while in a trance state, she also produced utterances in circumstances too involved to describe here which, if we understand the investigator's description of them, were glossolalic. [emphasis mine]" In other words, it does not appear Samarin actually investigated what "Helene Smith" wrote. He's giving us a conclusion based on what he DOES know. But he gives himself wiggle room there. If Helene Smith DID produce a language, it only means Samarin didn't see enough evidence. If such evidence was provided, Samarin would be forced to withdraw the conclusion of the last line and concede that what she did was different from glossolalia. You are free to reject Samarin's finding that Smith's utterance was glossolalic. But you can only move it, based on the evidence, to "inconclusive." You cannot argue that she produced xenoglossia merely on her say-so. Psychic fraud was RAMPANT in the late 1800s and the early 1900s (about the time modern SIT was "born," and not coincidentally, in my opinion). It remains rampant today. There's just more people calling BS today. I think Samarin's conclusion was probably correct, but I would be forced based on the limited information available to agree that it's inconclusive. It sure as hell isn't a genuine demonstration of devil-spirit power until otherwise proved! A clever and detailed fraud is still a fraud. The point is this: demonstrations of spiritual power that are empirically testable are not true until disproved. They are not untrue until proved. They are undetermined until proved one way or another. When a natural explanation exists to explain an alleged case of a demonstration of spiritual power, there is no rational reason to reject the natural explanation. There is a rational reason to reject free vocalization as a natural explanation for SIT if SIT were to produce known human languages. But it hasn't. Not according to the findings of the linguists. You may speculate that the linguists missed a spot, but it's on natural terms. They are imperfect and capable of making mistakes. It is silly to accuse them of being unable to distinguish between demonic power and genuinely godly power when they see no evidence of ANY spiritual power whatsoever. They see free vocalization, a natural, human ability that does exist, sounds like language, but fails to match the phonemic strata of any known language. Again, you may challenge the ability of linguists to identify and record phonemes because of aspirated or unaspirated "p's", which would lead to their failure to accurately classify a language they should otherwise have been able to detect. That is a natural, rational challenge to their findings. It has no basis. That is, you are not proving that they missed a language. You are, rather, speculating: suggesting that it remains entirely possible that they missed a language. No spiritual shenanigans or failure because they're not born again. Please. We're talking about empirical claims. If I'm producing a human language, I'm doing so whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu or atheist. Is it possible Samarin missed a language? Sure it's possible. More than one? Possible, but less likely. Known languages in every glossa he reviewed? Possible, but venturing into real conspiracy theory territory here. Is it possible that all unbiased researchers who've investigated glossolalia have all missed actual languages in all the samples they reviewed merely because they were not born again? I submit that if you take that likelihood seriously, we have left the realm of a rational conversation and should just bid each other adieu. This was never about proving my case. It wasn't about proving how widespread SIT fakery is. It was always about finding the one exception, the one case where one competent linguist reviewed one case of glossolalia and determined that, yes, this was an identifiable language. Swahili. And the person who produced it had no means of learning that language. And it was positively identified by a real speaker of Swahili (or whatever). Every researcher who has investigated glossolalia has failed to identify a language. Why? I say because there was none to identify, but that's merely suggested and demonstrated by the evidence. It's not proof (and I never said it was). Every researcher who has investigated glossolalia has failed to identify a language. Why? You say it's because they are spiritually unaware and incapable of the spiritual discernment required to see God in action. That's a theological response. You're entitled to it. I do not share it. Not with an empirical claim. Great for the new birth. Lousy for speaking in tongues. OR: You say it's because the linguists aren't as sharp as they think they are when it comes to the ability to classify language. That's a wildly speculative response. But you're entitled to it. What you have done, which you cannot do, is assume your speculation to be true and demand we account for it or explain it. No. You are entitled to speculate, but you are not entitled to a response that accounts for it. What I have not done, yet you repeatedly claim I have, is point to the testable evidence as definitive proof of my claim that free vocalization accounts for all SIT. That claim is unprovable. It is only disprovable, and it can be disproved by reminding everyone where the burden of proof lies in the first place. You say speaking in tongues produces a language. That is the claim that CAN be proved but hasn't been. Ragging on me for failing to prove my claim while demonstrating that you don't have the slightest idea how the burden of proof works in an honest debate (I'm sorry if that's insulting, but you've demonstrated it repeatedly and will do so again when you respond to this) misses the point. I can't prove my position. You can prove yours. Your court.

What guilt? Socks, you're not the one demanding I believe your story, so I do not demand answers that you are unwilling to provide. It's that simple. I have been chastised for not believing the story. In order to believe the story, I think I'm entitled to question its details. You're the only one with those details, so I am compelled to direct all questions to you. If you do not wish to participate in that conversation, I have ZERO problem with that. But it needs to be understood that I am not merely dismissing your account or playing a doubting Thomas "I don't believe it because I don't wanna" kind of game. If I do not ask the questions, I do not show a willingness to find the answers. I AM willing. Quite willing.

So, getting back to the scientifically valid area of classification: If we have an item with a set of known properties, such as a language, and an item with a set of unknown properties, such as a glossa, we can compare the properties (phonemic strata) of the unknown with the properties (phonemic strata) of the known. Goodman did this. Samarin did this. Other linguists and researchers did this. They have been unable to match glossa with known languages. We do not know if this was done with the anomalous case study. We need more data on that one. We have the researcher's conclusion, but it's not good enough. I don't accept his conclusion at this point even though it supports my position. To my knowledge, no one has taken the "null hypothesis" approach and applied it to the hypothesis that "all SIT is free vocalization." Such an approach would not produce any statistically valuable result, because this is a question of classification, not hypothesis testing. It is enough to search for a glossa that DOES produce a language. THAT would be a meaningful result. The null hypothesis approach is a red herring that, if conducted, would produce a rejectable result. The science of classification is a better way to approach the subject matter we are discussing. It will and must always be acknowledged that not all potential samples will be examined. The result will never be final. But it never needs to be. We can stop when we find ONE glossa classified as an actual human language. That's how honest people review research. They don't dismiss innate human abilities just because it threatens their predetermined conclusion.

It is true. I should have waited for another mod. Draw whatever conclusions you'd like. The thread is open again. I locked the thread because we were BOTH getting out of hand. I don't think there's a single reader who would disagree with that. A cooling off period was in order. I stand by that. Had I been an observer and not a participant, I would have done the same thing. I waited for you to get the last word and I had every intention of either reopening the thread myself or having another mod step in to do so. I agree: it was an abuse of the mod authority, but only insofar as I did it myself and did not wait for someone else to step in. The other mods will determine my "punishment."

Waysider, I have a problem with studies and presentations that indicate that SIT is connected to dissociation or a trance-like state. It is unfortunate that those studies draw conclusions based on observed evidence while ignoring evidence that we all know to be true, namely, that SIT does not require the speaker to go into any such state. Samarin actually recognizes this and dismisses the psychological findings of Goodman and others who drew similar conclusions. They made a documentable sample error and drew incorrect conclusions based on it. The people they observed may well have gone into such a state, but going into such a state is not a requirement of SIT. It is for that reason that I have been reluctant to cite Goodman, et. al. They are on strong ground when they actually analyze what is spoken and compare the phonemic strata to the native language of the speaker and to known languages. They are on weaker ground, because of their samples, when they draw psychological conclusions. Again, this is a documentable and verifiable observation, one that has been made and accounted for by other researchers. For the past two weeks, I have been trying to track down a case study in which a 61-year-old Pentecostal man practicing SIT produced phonemes that the researcher could not account for in the speaker's native language (English) or any language that person is known to have been in contact with. The researcher's conclusion was that the utterance was "language-like," but he could not identify the language (I'm using that vague term out of fairness. The researcher actually concluded it was not a known language, but I don't know how he came to that conclusion and I am unwilling to repeat it even though the conclusion supports my position). It sounds pretty compelling to me. However, the researcher was an expert in speech, not in linguistics. I do not know what he means by "language-like" and I don't know on what basis he discounted the utterance as a known language. Did he compare the phonemic strata that was observed to the phonemic strata of known languages and fail to find a match? Did he run it past a team of linguists to do the same? We don't know. We only have a rather incomplete description of what the findings were. The information I have on this study comes second hand from two sources. One is Poythress (I alluded to this MANY pages ago, but it was ignored). The other is a published response to the study accessible on the George Mason University Web site. The published response is interesting for two reasons. First, it provides the majority of the summary of findings that I just gave in the previous paragraph, and second, the person compares THAT research to the raw data (samples, phonemic structure, questionnaires, etc) found in the works of Samarin, Goodman, Kildahl and the other researchers we have been discussing. Stop and read that last sentence again: an independent researcher was able to access the raw data upon which Samarin based his research and conclusions. This is the raw data that, it has been suggested, does not exist. "You're not sharing it because you don't have it." Remember? I can understand why THAT statement was made, but it is in error. I do have it. I am reviewing it. You can't cite someone's raw data and use it to conduct further research if that raw data has not been collected or published. I have one issue with the published response to the Pentecostal case study: while I am impressed with the quality of the writing, the documentation, and the evident reliance on raw data (that supposedly does not exist because one person on this thread said so), I have no indication whatsoever of who the writer (other than her name) is or what qualifies her to conduct such a study. Was she a student writing a term paper? Did she get an A? Or was HER review shoddy? That a non-linguist (the one who did the case study) could not detect a language doesn't impress me. A language may well have been produced, and I will have been proven wrong. That the same non-linguist could label the utterance "language-like" equally does not impress me. As yet, I do not know his basis for making such an assertion. But the case study raises a question I must address, one way or another: Can a person engaging in free vocalization produce phonemes with which he is not familiar? There is no earthly reason to suggest he cannot, but we would expect such occurrences to be exceedingly rare (and, in fact, they are: both Poythress and the other independent researcher agree that the case study's findings are anomalous and do not represent the majority of glossolalia that has been studied). But our foray into the research was never about proving my case to a reasonable scientific confidence interval blah blah blah. It was ALWAYS about looking for any evidence to suggest SIT was producing a language unknown to the speaker. Science tests hypotheses to determine whether they are true. To do so, they employ the scientific method that has been invoked on this thread multiple times. But scientists do NOT employ such a method when they are not testing a hypothesis. The relevant scientific activity that WE are looking at involves classification, not hypothesis testing. Classification involves taking an unknown, unidentified or uncategorized object or phenomenon and comparing it to known, identified and categorized objects or phenomena to look for a match. The hypothesis that SIT is free vocalization has not been tested. This is not a failure to employ the scientific method resulting in shoddy research. Is a person riding a bicycle doing a poor job of driving a car? No! He's doing something completely different. You don't condemn a bicyclist as a poor driver just because he isn't hitting the gas pedal to accelerate! Samarin and the other researchers were engaged in the classification of glossolalia. They were not testing a hypothesis that it's indistinguishable from free vocalization. They were classifying it and failed to detect any properties that distinguish it from (what has later been labeled) free vocalization. And that is a scientifically valid means of arriving at that conclusion. In all the research that we have reviewed on glossolalia, no scientist engaged in the valid exercise of classification has classified a sample as a known language. As of this writing, I am aware of a single anomalous finding -- still not classified as a language, but described as "language-like" (whatever that means) and producing phonemes not native to the speaker. I am eagerly searching for more information about that anomaly. Maybe it proves me wrong. Maybe it doesn't prove me wrong, but maybe it comes close enough to doing so for the purpose of a bunch of amateurs posting on a message board. I was relucant to share even this much information. I have seen the dishonest way research is handled on this thread when we know exactly who the researchers are and what their findings are. When we have limited information about the researchers and no access to the research itself, I can imagine that the speculation will run wild. But I am confident enough in my position that I will divulge as much as I have. I have given interested readers enough information to track this stuff down on their own. I welcome the challenge -- from honest debaters. Those who insist they have 11 fingers because they won't think hard enough to recognize the flaw in the chain of logic that led to that conclusion need not apply.

Robert Wuhl Bull Durham Susan Sarandon

Alas, I do not get to impose my own sentence. I stand by what I did yesterday. I admit that I should not have been the one to do it. I should have waited for another mod. But I don't think there's anyone here who can argue that the action itself was unjustified. This thread has become about one person's rejection of free vocalization as an innate human ability. I can understand that, because it is evident to me that if free vocalization exists as a natural explanation for what we all did as SIT, it poses a fatal threat to the notion that SIT is real. No actual evidence distinguishes free vocalization from SIT, so naturally, free vocalization cannot be allowed to be taken as a given. But it is a given. It is an innate human ability. That is not one person's opinion. It is an observable and repeatable fact. It is proved everytime another person does it. (So is blowing bubbles underwater, I confess. But the attempt to belittle free vocalization through the use of absurd analogies will no longer be entertained by me). I will no longer discuss it or defend it, nor will I respond to that poster unless at least one other person agrees that a point has been made that deserves an answer. If there's anyone reading this who does not believe that speaking in tongues can be faked without that fakery being spiritually energized, speak up and I will answer to the best of my ability. Otherwise, I will consider that discussion closed among those of us treating the subject matter honestly.

Socks, I answered you on the SIT thread. I do not know what the consequences of my action will be.

A made up term that describes a real thing is irrelevant. What matters is that free vocalization labels a real thing. It was not invented to account for SIT, mediums, and other supernatural phenomena. The activity precedes its application to the conversation we're having. You're belittling and making a mockery of an honest discussion and debate. You really need to stop. Look, you've convinced yourself that there's no such thing as free vocalization as an innate human ability. All the evidence lines up against you. I won't debate it further. And I won't debate you further. Sorry.

Explanation accepted. All I ask is that others do not expect me to believe the story based on the paucity of information.

In a misguided attempt to cool things down, I used mod capabilities to temporarily lock the thread. I chastised no one, reminded everyone of the rules, and waited for things to cool down. I forgot that I had already revealed that mod identity and, no way around it, got busted. This was no effort to silence dissent. It was intended to cool tempers, starting with my own. I know the rules. I will abide by them. I expect others to do the same and for other mods to police things as the need arises. I will accept any mod reprimand handed down by the powers that be. While I informed the other mods of what I was doing, I did not wait for permission to act. I have reported my behavior and am awaiting disciplinary action.

LOL Oops. Busted. Was just trying to cool things down. I ran it past the other mods and gave them veto power. I was trying to cool down and let the other mods review things. I am not above the rules. If i cross the line, i expect to be held accountable. But that's why i cannot reprimand anyone on that thread. my apologies. Just trying to cool things down. It is true that there were no complaints, though, and I deliberately waited for chockfull to post again before the lockdown. It was never going to last more than a couple of hours. The thread is reopened and the modcat5 post has been deleted. I think participants on the thread can vouch for me that I never edited or chastised anyone while wearing the modhat.

Post them. Anyone who hasn't seen either movie by now probably won't

Friday the 13th Warrior

But not one of those instances shows me misusing the term "proved" or "proven" and applying it to my opinion, which I DID state as fact, just as you have done with your opinions. So this is an example of us asking you for proof of claim A and unearthing proof of something other than claim A. You lie. How many more would you like me to document? Every time you accuse me of referring to my opinion as "proved," you lie. I have done no such thing. You have been on me for page after page after page, whining about my misuse of the word "proved," and you have not shown a SINGLE EXAMPLE of my misuse of that word or its application to my opinion. STOP LYING ABOUT ME!

The reason I misstepped on sample space, and I did, is that you misused it. There is no way to conduct the study you propose, because the question we are looking at does not lend itself to this approach. You admit as much in your next line. The first half of your sentence invalidates the second. It would not prove my point, and there is no confidence interval that would be mutually acceptable. The truth is that samples of SIT have been reviewed critically and have never been demonstrated to produce an actual language. The sample space is "rejects the contention that SIT IS free vocalization" or "fails to reject the contention that SIT IS free vocalization." Thus far, ALL STUDIED SAMPLES fit the latter category. None fit the former. Now, you dispute HOW and WHY there are no samples that reject the contention that SIT IS free vocalization. But you do so through utter speculation and a genuine appeal to ignorance: you believe the linguists who've studied this phenomenon are incompetent to identify languages. There's no evidence for it, but until it's disproved, you hold it as a truth until proven otherwise. You are free to do so, but that is a genn-you-whine fallacy at work, for all to see. So HAVE AT IT. I've already discredited your silly "free mouthvoiceization" red herring, but I'll gladly do it again. The difference between free vocalization and free mouthvoiceisation is that free vocalization actually describes an observed phenomenon that exists, can be produced at will, can be reproduced among those who are unfamiliar with it, and has been repeatedly demonstrated by children, actors, admitted fakers and self-deluded but well-meaning Christians who think they're producing Biblical SIT. Free mouthvoiceization is not only an invented term, but it describes an invented concept that does not exist, can't be reproduced, can't be taught, etc. Now, if you told me that free mouthvoiceization is the label you invented to describe the act of talking in your sleep (which really exists), I would be forced to conclude that free mouthvoiceization exists, but only as defined. Can anyone spot the logical fallacy chockfull employed here? It's called false equivalence: when a shared trait (in this case, the slapping of a label on something) is used to is used to equate those two things. But there are too many differences between free vocalization (established, real, PROVED) and free mouthvoiceization (unestablished, fictional by definition, unproved). So please, stop using a discredited example to prove there's no such thing as free vocalization. There is. You cannot escape it, and as long as you hold to this absurd notion, I will continue to address you as the dishonest debater you are continually showing yourself to be. You know, for someone who supposedly understands what sample space is, your misuse of it is kind of funny: Um, a sample space is not a defined group of people. It's a defined set of potential outcomes. BECAUSE I thought you were talking about groups of people, I assumed you were talking about sample size and not sample space. Had I realized you were talking about a potential set of outcomes (and you show no evidence of understanding that this is the meaning of the term), I would have recognized that you were using a term that had slipped from my memory. Once again, you have taken terms, misdefined them, and misapplied them to this conversation. THAT's why I keep threatening to "take my ball and go home." It's not because ALL the points you're making are bad. It's because when you DO have a good point, I have to sift through too much crap to get to it. I have no obligation to sift through your crap. You have lied about and misrepresented my posts, you have lied about and misrepresented the research we have been reviewing. You exalt a college paper uncritically and dismiss peer-reviewed research as shoddy. You demand background details of people who participated in legitimate research but accept, without criticism, published anecdotes of Catholics and Persians without a shred of evidence that the people described even exist, much less that they experienced what is claimed. I should say that I have every reason to believe that the information on the samples used in Samarin and Goodman and the others is actually documented. I hesitate to share it at this point for fear of what will happen when you get your dishonest and disingenuous hands on them. But hey, you already won this debate, so why are we even having this conversation? Anyone who doesn't believe free vocalization is an innate human ability is not being honest in this discussion. Period. I would just as soon argue over the existence of the moon. The innate, human ability to free vocalize is proved every time someone does it. And people do it all the time. Let me ask you a question: before gravity was labeled, did it exist?

Actually, this is REALLY easy. So, in order to reject the null hypothesis, I need to partition the potential outcomes according to its probabilities. Probability one: Glossolalia produces a human language, distinguishing it from free vocalization. Probability two: Glossolalia does NOT produce a human language, failing to distinguish it from free vocalization. Plenty of examples have already been tested. Glossolalia has failed to be distinguished from free vocalization. Your move. Oh, that's right, free vocalization doesn't exist. Because you said so. Really. There are no "Reject H0" samples in any of the studies we've observed. You're welcome. You HAVE shown multiple examples of me stating my opinion as fact (an allegation I never denied, by the way). You have NEVER shown an instance of me using "proved, proof" or any other variation of that word improperly. About that, you have lied and are continuing to lie. The only caveat: we disagree on whether free vocalization is proved. It is. You deny that. Your denial is without merit. But that's as close as you're going to get. In fact, from the beginning of this conversation, I have always conceded that my case can't be proved, so it would be quite silly for me to declare that it has been. It has not, nor can it be. It CAN be disproved... if you prove your big fat claim.