Raf

You're not wrong, excy, but you're not right either. In MY OPINION (for whatever it's worth), the question of the validity of our practice of speaking in tongues is qualitatively different from questions like "is there a God" and "was Jesus raised from the dead." Those last two questions are impossible to prove, one way or the other. There either is or there isn't. He either was or He wasn't. You can't record it, analyze it, put it in a beaker, boil it, etc. It's not provable. It's not disprovable. You take the available evidence and you make a leap of faith. The question of tongues has lots in common with the other questions, with one major distinction. It IS testable. What you speak can be recorded, replayed, analyzed, compared to known languages, etc. Now, if one were to summarily reject the testing, the discussion is over without either side having been proved or disproved. If one were to accept the testing and prove the veracity of the practice by producing a known language, or even an unknown language with the unmistakable characteristics of a known language (say, Tolkien's Elvish). Ultimately, the practice can't be disproved completely without submitting every speaker to testing. What are we left with? The only way to stop the speculation is to find a tongues speaker who produces a known language, someone who can demonstrate that he has not been exposed to the language in question, has not read it, heard it, practiced it, etc., and whose messages are saying what the Bible says they should say. So my position can be disproved with a single bona fide example of SIT. But it can never really be proved. Guys, we were supposed to have at least 100,000 tongues speakers (did that number ever go up? Shouldn't it have, by now?). Surely we can find ONE!?! Unless God won't let us, in which case (and only in which case) the premise that it cannot be proved or disproved becomes true. No way to know that. But I'll keep looking until He tells me to stop. He has my cell number. However, if God won't let us be tested, what does that say of the people who agreed to be tested? No honest escaping of the answer: they faked it. And when they faked it (we're assuming here God won't allow it to be tested) they did not appear to recognize any difference between their faking it and their genuine experiences. Does that tell you something about their alleged genuine experiences? Your answer to that question is a matter of deep personal faith. I can't argue with it. Me, I believe it speaks volumes. Like, Encyclopedia Brittanica sized volumes (whatever happened to those guys?). I sense I'm getting redundant. I hope I've satisfactorily addressed your question without disrespecting your right to disagree with me. One last add to this post and I promise I'll let it go: I am willing to drop my use of the variants of "lies" and, until it becomes necessary to confront an issue head on (as in, two paragraphs ago), "fake" and replace it with "free vocalization" if that soothes the pain people understandably feel when they are, effectively, called liars. I've always conceded it was a harsh word, and I appreciate that so many were willing to overcome it to take on the issue.

The evidence, what there is of it, is against it when comparing the practice of teaching tongues with the description of non-religious free vocalization combined with Samarin's hypothesis of motive affecting outcome. God said so, every Tuesday and Thursday.

I keep forgetting to bring this up, but there is ONE contingency I had not seriously considered (nor am I now, but it needs to be raised in fairness). I think we can safely assume, although we MIGHT be wrong, that Samarin's study included no TWI SITters. If (and this is a Jupiter-sized if) TWI and its offshoots are the only people producing the real thing, then my thesis is wrong and we would never see it because they have not been part of these studies. Stop laughing!

I'm gonna put a toe in this pool, and I'll trust you guys to let me know if the water starts to boil and I should step out: What's the bigger, fatter claim? "In the privacy of my quiet time with God (or at a meeting of believers, or in my car, or wherever I want: whichever fits your view), I am able to bring forth a language I have never known and never been exposed to, a language whose meaning is known only to the heavenly host and the Almighty Creator of the Universe." "I know you love God and appreciate your sincerity, but no, brother, no you can't." Which is the bigger, fatter claim?

I would have thought this was easy. that is a hint

Chockfull, that post took a ton of restraint. I applaud you for it. without agreeing with me, Steve appears to have tackled that very subject, as have you. I don't have an answer for you. Excy, the short answer for me is no. The longer answer is that proving the resurrection is very much like proving God; it's an untestable premise. The best we have is the Bible's assurance that there were a truckload of witnesses bigger than my Twitter followers list, at least some of whom preferred to die rather than renounce a belief whose validity they knew firsthand. Would you die for a belief you knew to be false?

By the way, the absolutist tenor of my previous post should not be read back to call into doubt any Biblical accounts. Assuming those to be true, it would mean that what we did/are doing is quite simply not what they did, and a diligent search for the truth is in order.

A fair distinction: It is an error to equate glossolalia with an ecstatic state just because those two qualities correlate in the experience of SOME tongues speakers.

I think I've done the best I can do considering the limited framework of GSC. I've made my case. I have shown from independent sources the mechanics and innocent motive involved in the process I described. And I have to say that I have seen no actual evidence, aside from deep, personal conviction of practitioners, that anyone in or out of TWI has done anything other than free vocalization as described by Rev Vern. His distinction of TSpeech notwithstanding, Vern gives no verifiable reason to differentiate TSpeech from nonreligious, non Christian free vocalization. He's given a non-verifiable reason, faith/God. But even he only raises it as (perhaps I'm oversimplifying here) the only thing standing between equating the TSpeech with non-religious free vocalization. Now, I can't stop someone from grasping at that straw, but... well, I think I just said what I think of it. In short, I don't believe anyone anywhere has spoken in tongues, resulting in a real language, because there's no proof of it. Your assertions that you're not faking speak to your sincerity, but Pentecostal interpreters are sincere too. I'll agree with Wierwille on the value of sincerity. It guarantees itself, and nothing more. Shall I place the ball in your court, or is there something else you'd like to see from me?

Okayyyy...

Your call. But I choose not to stop there.

You're scaring me, chockfull. OldSkool, are you following this?

I think that's what Vern describes, Waysider, but he stops just short of making that conclusion.

What we don't see in the studies is any linguistic difference between Tspeech (I could be wrong, but I think this term is exclusive to Rev. Vern) and non-religious free vocalization (ditto, in this context).

Agreed. And, by the same logic, you can't rule out the possibility that someone making it up can produce something that has qualities of language even though it's all coming from their head and God has nothing to do with it.

Also, if God is not participating in the study, then all of Samarin's findings about the qualities of language that he DID detect in glossolalia become irrelevant. You would now be conceding that something utterly made up by the speaker (God is not participating in the experiment) can have some qualities of language. So... We... Agree?

As I said, in a lot of ways, the conversation ends there. Who am I, that I should withstand God? Except for those people who did agree to experiment, spoke in tongues, and faked it. You have to tell them that. Remember, God's not participating in the experiment. They're speaking in tongues. They must be faking it. You tell them. ;)

Couple of things to note: My last post was written before I had the opportunity to read the three or four (more?) that came before it. I didn't mean to ignore anyone. Second, in case it wasn't clear, I do not agree with the contention that neither theory can be proved or disproved. Mine can certainly be disproved, and the moment we document SIT resulting in xenoglossia, both sides will agree that one theory was proved beyond doubt at the expense of the other. And third, please not some small but substantive edits on my previous post, in case someone has quoted me from the "first edition," as it were.

I'm not really intent on people seeing it one way or another. I mean, I am, just as we all are. That's human. But count the number of people who've openly disagreed with me yet have not received any arguments or nasty responses from me. I have no interest in beating people over the head with my point of view. However, when told to prove my point, I put the burden where it belongs: since my point can't be proven without examining each speaker, but it CAN be disproved by ONE speaker producing a known language, clearly, the easier thing should be to disprove my thesis. It hasn't happened: in my view because it can't, in the view of others because God won't allow it. Well, I can't argue with God, so in a lot of ways the conversation should end there. But I'm not obliged to concede my point of view on that basis. You'll find, I think, that most of the disagreement expressed on the thread stems from here. I don't find that kind of "God won't let us test SIT" reasoning acceptable. The Rev. Vern is open to it, although he doesn't agree with it in principle (and cites scripture to back it up. Then again, so does Satan). Do you see how the explanation for how it works is supernatural, yet the explanation for why no one can prove it works is ALSO supernatural? Doesn't that strike you as a tad bit convenient? A theory is tested against available facts. The more facts fit the theory, the more reliable the theory is. If another theory is going to lay claim to the facts, that theory would have to do a better job of explaining the facts than the first theory. I submit that in this argument, all the facts are aligned on one theory. The competing theory considers it a success when its attempted application fails. My theory: people who think they are speaking in tongues are actually making it up in their heads. Their desire to do it is strong, and they truly love God and are "asking Him for a fish." Surrounded by other tongues speakers (either literally, in PFAL, or figuratively, in private) they do something completely unremarkable, spiritually speaking. They begin to engage in free vocalization. Going into the process with the preconceived notion that what comes out must sound like a language, they vary the sounds that come out of their mouths. They don't pre-think the sounds, but they know it's not going to be beep beep beep, boop boop boop. The creativity of the human mind is such that when we perform this exercise, we can develop quite a "vocabulary." (Note that I put that word in quotes and am not meaning it as literally true). We stop. We asked God for a fish. We gave ourselves chili. We surrounded each other and congratulated each other and bore witness to the day we saw you catch your first fish. Because so many of us did the same thing, the majority in the same way, we bound ourselves to each other in a way most fraternities could only dream. But there was nothing supernatural about it. Any child could do what we did. An atheist could do it. A pagan Buddhist Catholic could do it. ;). It wasn't God. If I'm right, you will never document someone speaking in tongues and producing a real language (not something that has language like qualities. I'm talking French. Russian. Yiddish. Chinese. Swahili. An honest to God language). When I search the facts, I need find only one exception, one, to prove me wrong. The competing theory searches for alternative reasons to explain why observable facts will never bear it out. Forgive me if I find that theory less satisfying.

Touche on your first paragraph... And your last. Well said all around. Driving now, so will respond more when I can

And I will repeat, ask Mike if my previous posts lacked edge. Ask JohnIsBack whether our previous exchanges have been marked by politeness. You detect a new edginess because this time you disagree with my conclusion. There was apparently no edginess in calling my methodology Satanic or painting me as a crybaby politician. No, the "edginess" is when I call that out. Gee, he's so bitter. I don't mean to restart anything with chockfull, but it just seems to me that the "wow, look at the edginess here" is just a TAD one-sided.

Deluded liars. There's no such thing as coffee. Reposting (without checking links first) for Steve.

I think discussions of tone detract from the discussion as much as the tone itself does. This thread went on for a few pages before it got contentious, and even with the "lie" language in the first posts, it didn't start getting ugly until much later. I'm not proposing a solution. Despite the pop psychology that's gone on here, there is little difference between how I've posted here and how I've posted in other threads. True, it's been a while since I decided to venture into all these discussions, so some of you might not remember that. But I assure you JohnWhereDidHeGo does not see any difference in how I'm dealing with him, because we've rarely been on the same side of anything. Oldiesman and I have had truces, but more arguments than truces. Mike, fuhgeddaboutit. But now I'm not taking on Wierwille-worship or inordinate respect for Wierwillism. Now I'm looking at something that hits at the heart of many people's prayer lives. So it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that anyone would get deeply and personally upset. What surprises me is the expectation that I will NOT respond the way I have. I do apologize for striking so close to everyone's hearts. But the way I see it, that's only because a lie has been placed there that is very difficult and painful to root out. Yeah, yeah. You don't agree with me. Ok, I get that. But if you (or anyone reading) ever comes to the realization that, "shoot, you mean NO one has produced a verified, documented example of tongues of men? We ALL speak tongues of angels? ALL of us? Gee, I'm skeptical," know this: you're not alone. You're not the first. You won't be the last. Come on out. Faking a spiritual experience doesn't fool Him (and, you know, it doesn't fool you either). If that doesn't apply to you, then it's not addressed to you. I have my belief, you have yours, they're incompatible and there's more than enough room for both. If it does apply to you: I get it. And it's ok.

I'm talking WITH geisha here, not necessarily TO her: To which I'll add: If my tone and tenor have turned you off to my point of view, I feel bad. For you. Because it shouldn't be about people or personalities. It should be about the discussion, the points being made, your willingness to approach them with an open mind, and (put this first, last or middle) your faith. By allowing my tone to turn you off, you avoid the discussion, you don't deal with it. Then again... Exactly... you don't HAVE to deal with it. No one's forcing you or anyone else. Ok, now I'm talking TO geisha: I don't find this difficult to reconcile with my position OR TWI's. If it's free-vocalization, it's just as easy for a Christian to do it is for a non-Christian. If it's really what it's advertised to be, then it's proof that no matter what these folks believe now, they are still born again of God's spirit because it's seed and it never goes away. Sure you could, from either perspective.

Disagree. What he did was not present a thesis statement, but justify his refusal to draw the conclusion that his evidence clearly points to. It's his right, but it's not dispassionate research.