Raf

This kind of deliberately dishonest quotation is impossible to argue against. Samarin's distinction between xenoglossia (it's really a language) and glossolalia (it's not a language, but it has some characteristics of language because that is how the speaker manufactures it) is deeply instructive and utterly ignored by chockfull. Even the fact that they put the word "language" in quotes is ignored, when it seems rather obvious to the reader who is NOT trying to call me names that the use of quotes there is equivalent to "so-called." Glossolalia is a "language" the way Victor Paul Wierwille was a "man of God." Look! Raf called Wierwille a man of God! What are you, 12? An objective reading of Samarin forces you to conclude that when he writes of glossolalia, he is studying the stuff the speaker made up. He specifically distinguishes it from any real language and instead says we can learn something about the development of language by observing how people manufacture glossolalia. The "words" and "phrases" in glossolalia exist only insofar as the speaker seems to have attached meaning and deliberately broken up "sentences." Forget that he's already ruled out glossolalia as a real language, forget that he specifically describes how and why the speaker makes it up, forget the fact that Samarin accounts for why this made up stuff is going to have some characteristics of language, and it's easy to celebrate a victory when he makes a reference to so-called "language" and say SEE! A linguist says it's a language! Yeah, no he didn't. Better to call his methodology Satanic than to force him to say the opposite of what he's saying.

Chockfull, I am truly alarmed at the dishonest manner in which you cite these studies and portray their findings, particularly when it comes to Samarin, and the depths to which you stoop to discredit me. It is, I would have thought, beneath you.

Steve, I'm sure a google search of non Christian SIT or pre Christian SIT would be faster and more efficient than waiting for Waysider or relying on any one link. Just a thought.

You know, chockfull, you need to go back and check what you wrote regarding Samarin. You severely misrepresented his work.

Nice. Stand by Me, Myself and Irene A sort of modern retelling of the Scarlet Letter is about a high school girl who tries to earn a reputation as a slut by hanging out with an elite squad of soldiers wanted for a crime that they did not commit and who go around helping people who need a little strong-armed assistance.

Let me retract what I said about Landry's sources, because I think I misread a page. At least one of his sources, the Malony-Lovekin study, does not appear to be linguistic in nature at all, but I'm not sure what it WAS since I can't find much more than citations and an availability of their book on Amazon. I'd order it, but I'm not entirely sure my interest level is all that high. I don't mean to be picking on Landry, but his paper seems to quote one book that quotes a lot of other studies, making the research he's presented simultaneously second and third hand. It makes it difficult to analyze. I'll put his work down for now. I wouldn't want strangers dissecting my college papers. They were dreadful.

Well, yeah, he's a geographer NOW. But at the time he was a college junior looking for a good grade while working toward his degree in philosophy/religion. I think his sources are of more interest to me, but unfortunately, I am having trouble actually finding their work online. What I have found seems to indicate that they were interested in this as a behavioral issue (ie, are tongues speakers psychotic?). There's more to be researched there. As for extensively quoting Landry, for the purposes you and I are describing, either of us should be almost embarrassed to quote him as any authority. As someone who agrees with you (or with me), fine. But you wanted an academic study, and I doubt you meant an undergraduate essay. We'll agree there. Break out the champagne!

Bingo on Landry. At the time he wrote this, he was studying for a philosophy/religious studies degree at Louisiana State University. He's not a linguist. He was a college kid writing a term paper. His conclusion is nice, though. Made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. But I would not have provided that article as anything of value to this discussion. I'm sure he's very smart and nice. Polythress is a religious man who is, in many ways, preaching to the choir. I question the validity of his research on the grounds of bias. Without a doubt, he is smarter than I am. But he's not presenting an argument based on linguistics or science. He's like the brilliant priest with advanced degrees who argue for belief in transubstantiation. Not impressive. Where I will give Polythress credit is in his recognition of the process of free vocalization. It NAILS the process we were taught in TWI. If one were seeking to find a difference between the free vocalization and what we were taught to do in TWI, one would be hard pressed indeed. Just my opinion, of course. Did I miss the part where you dissected Samarin?

Let me re-emphasize the part I put in bold, because it belies the claims YOU say I'm making about these studies. Polythress, Lord bless him, has produced a review of studies that I will again say is laughably biased. I'll grant him his doctorate, though. Impressive. But he started with a conclusion and arranged his evidence to fit it. Not impressive in the slightest. But yes, Landry did cite his sources. I haven't gotten to them yet.

I have no evidence that Landry is anything more than a college kid in a theology class. As for the article I described as laughably biased, I agree, it says exactly what you say it does. Did I mention it was laughably biased?

Well, for starters, the darn thing looks like a term paper. I wonder what grade he got? What was the school? Etc. Let's see what we can learn from his sources, which he had the decency to document.

"prove me wrong" "ok, put your claim to the test." "I can't. God won't let me." And I'm the born politician? The problem I see in these studies is a false distinction between what they term glossolalia and gibberish. When I use the term gibberish, I do not mean the same thing they do. It's unfortunate, but not an obstacle over which much time should be wasted. The bottom line is that no language was detected. Clearly, if you read the studies, particularly the one o cited at greater length, we see that the speaker on glossolalia makes a deliberate attempt to produce something that sounds like a language. What is produced, by that very definition, is not gibberish because gibberish does not make an attempt to sound like any language. Gibberish is random. Glossolalia is not. But what they both have in common is that they are utterly invented by the speaker. I have to confess that I had not read the study provided by Waysider. I do not know who wrote it. I made a statement about what I took away from a particular quote. So, in fairness, I'm gonna go read the rest...

Well, if the speaker controls when he stops and starts but the words spoken are inspired by God, what other spiritual explanation is there? Doesn't quite prove fakery, does it?

Oh my. Excy has criticized me. I want to go home and rethink my life.

That's why I added "as far as this thread is concerned." I am not suggesting the issue is not worth exploring. I'm saying that in THIS thread, I'm not exploring it. I am not seeking to discredit Paul. I AM seeking to discredit Victor Paul and his fakery. I will leave the question of Paul to you. I'm not trying to stop anyone from exploring the answer to your question. I just know what makes a thread Doctrinal and what makes it About The Way, and am seeking to keep the two separate for as long as I can (more people read About The Way, and many avoid Doctrinal because they're not interested in the nature of conversation that takes place there).

That's fine. We can agree there (at least as far as the implication of the findings as they relate to this topic). Again, it would be of immense value to find a linguist who verified that this was in fact producing a language. We're beyond my expertise here, so for the sake of moving the discussion along, I'll just agree with you. Disagree with me on this if you wish. There's plenty of room for more than one point of view. To me, it should look like, well, a language. But maybe I'm picky. There you go again. It CAN be proved one way. Not the other. If it produced a recognized language, this conversation would be over. So it CAN be proved. We'll agree that it can't be disproved. Mighty nice of you. I made reference to the studies and was asked to cite them. Then a snippet of another study was quoted as though it demonstrated something that, in my opinion, it does not. I'm not trying to prove you wrong, per se. I am supplementing my position with documentation that you can take or leave. You say you're not faking it. You are also not demanding that I prove my position. So if you're not demanding proof from me, and I'm not demanding proof from you, we're fine. I would LIKE for you to change your mind and recognize what I believe to be a disservice that was done to all of us in God's name. But I ain't gonna drag you kicking and screaming. As far as this thread is concerned, I have made no effort and have no desire to discredit, validate, explore, interpret or reinterpret what Paul wrote. That's why my contention remains that this thread is not doctrinal.

More from Samarin. This is rich. Pull up a chair: I'll translate that into plain English: It's faked. Always. The fact that there's any doubt about it speaks well of our creativity, not at all of the validity of the supernatural origin it claims. Of course, this doesn't prove that everyone everywhere who speaks in tongues is flat out faking it. It sure as hell implies it. But it doesn't prove it. No, to prove it, you would have to [censored by the Committee to Protect the Righteous From the Methods of Lucifer]. BRING IT!

It is interesting, the more I read Samarin (the same study Chockfull quoted before I posted it) that his assessment is simply devastating to the concept of speaking in tongues as we were taught in TWI. Samarin appears to be extremely polite in holding back on judgmental statements while delivering fatal lines like: "A glossa is always meaningless in the linguistic sense." "...although xenoglossia is claimed by Christian charismatics to be part of the tongue-speaking experience, they would be unable to provide a case that would stand up to scientific investigation, and if it did, it would probably prove to be cryptomnesic [bits of a language the speaker knew but forgot that he knew - Raf interjecting here]. Having ruled out the possibility of charismatic xenoglossia, we are left with untold thousands of cases of unintelligible verbal utterances." The boldface in this post and in a previous post represent my emphasis, not the writers'. But damn. "Ruled out the possibility of charismatic xenoglossia," to me, sounds a heck of a lot like "ain't no one nowhere who produced an actual language they did not previously know." What's left is an examination of the quality of fakery employed by present-day tongues speakers. Just like Wierwille taught, they don't just say beep beep beep, boop boop boop. They're too smart for that. They want it to sound like a language, so it does in some ways sound like one. But they're not languages. Not in any meaningful definition of the term. To say that they're not gibberish is to exercise, I think, a level of academic politeness that is not necessarily called for considering the gravity of the claim being made. I would argue that they are not simple gibberish (goo goo ga ga) but are rather a more sophisticated gibberish invented by the speaker who is deliberately trying to produce something that sounds like a language. The only way it's NOT going to "sound like a language to me" is, frankly, if the faker is really bad at it. Onday!

Could you imagine the apostle Paul holding up a scroll of the Hebrew alphabet and having new Christians practice tongues by directing the speakers to the variety of sounds possible in their language. He'd have been laughed out of the Bible! Me, I paid $50 for that crap.

Yeah, I noticed that. Here's my take: I regret the unfortunate and exaggerated politeness of researchers who decline to call a spade a spade out of undue respect or politeness to their subjects. I agree that this paper does not make the judgment that the practice was faked. In fact, it makes no judgment at all. It merely examines the vocalizations that are uttered. The key that I walk away from here is that these recordings are listed and the determination is that it's not a language. As Samarin wrote, it's got the facade of a language (as it would if the speaker were faking it with any measure of competence, as we were specifically instructed to do in TWI), but it lacks the qualities of real language. No, he does not take the next logical step and call BS. Disappointing, I think.

Fair enough. I agree. My first wife always sounded exactly the same when she practiced SIT. Every other word, and every sentence, ended with the sound "on-day." Though I never said it at the time, I knew darned well she was faking it. She's a wiccan now, last we spoke, so I'm sure if she were to see and answer this poll, if she were being perfectly honest, she would have to answer D or E. It's inescapable. I don't think you "proved" Wierwille faked it, but you reached the conclusion based on some fairly reasonable grounds. I am sure that if you confronted him, he would respond in terms that were indistinguishable from the arguments put forth by you and by JohnHeIs. But, of course, he's dead, so I can't prove that. We do have his admission that he faked it once (by speaking a language, or at least some foreign words, that he knew). So we KNOW he has a history of faking it because he admitted it. But then he presented his subsequent experience as genuine. In my opinion, his recording on PFAL should withstand a linguistic examination. I'll repeat that I haven't taken the time to really examine linguistic studies, so I'm on shaky ground when I speak of them. That said, I have no problem complying with your request. Here is a summary of studies that are instructive, but presented in a laughably biased manner: http://www.frame-poythress.org/linguistic-and-sociological-analyses-of-modern-tongues-speaking-their-contributions-and-limitations/ In this study I found the section on "free vocalization" of particular interest, as I believe it IS what we were all instructed to do in PFAL (and has no spiritual/miraculous implications whatsoever). Well shoot. Overall, I think the author of this piece bends over backward to validate what the evidence before him discredits. But your opinion may differ. Here is a study that appears less biased but that I have not fully read. It's a fairly long pdf by our standards, about 27 pages of really small print. The author doesn't seem to be seeking to prove or disprove anything, but to describe the practice. He is, thus, exceedingly polite and respectful of the deeply religious people who have subjected their private "prayers" to academic examination. He is also, for academic purposes anyway, not immediately dismissive of the idea of parapsychology, which leads me open to questioning at least SOME of what he's saying: http://philosophy-religion.info/handouts/pdfs/Samarin-Pages_48-75.pdf Of particular interest is this quote on page 54 (the whole thing starts on p. 49; the stuff in brackets is my words) Here's some more "stuff" to consider: http://www.religioustolerance.org/tongues5.htm This article quotes from the above study, but I haven't found the source of the quote yet. I'm sure it's there. I just have more searching to do:

Chockfull, on what evidence do you base the conclusion that Wierwille faked it?

It would not be counterfeit, necessarily, but faked. If we're using those terms interchangeably, then fine, counterfeit. Mind you, I'm not suggesting no samples exist. Plenty exist, and insofar as they have been examined by competent linguists, they have all been dismissed as non-languages (not archaic, not angelic, not foreign, not languages). I do believe there have been some apparent instances of someone purporting to speak in a language that they haven't learned, but further examination revealed a prior exposure to the language (and the messages did not fit the description of what tongues would be provided in either TWI or the Bible). But I'm basing the above on a cursory Google search of a handful of studies, so I'm not resting too much on them. I'm looking for the study that says "Holy Cow, this farmer from Ohio just spoke in a language that has not been seen on earth since the days of ancient Egypt!" I am unable to find that study. Here's the thing: I've been asked to prove that everyone everywhere who practices SIT is faking it. Can't do it. I would have to investigate everyone everywhere and have them voluntarily subject their practice to observation. I can't even get someone on this thread to do that, and they WANT me to be wrong. We CAN prove me wrong by finding someone who, shucks, can do it. Samples abound. They're all over You Tube. But proving that some dude crying while muttering "muhmuhmuhmuhmuh" is not speaking in tongues doesn't impress anyone reading THIS thread for a variety of legitimate reasons, not the least of which is the fact that he is lying (can we agree that guy was faking it?) does not disprove anyone's TWI experience. Now, here's where it gets interesting. Wierwille claimed to SIT during the PFAL class. I mean he did it. We all heard it. Splendid! In his case, which has already been recorded and identified as the genuine article by the faithful... submit it to a linguist, identify the language and (assuming success in identifying the language) determine to some level of satisfaction that Wierwille, who held AT LEAST a Master's Degree, had not previously been exposed to that language. This is not a new recording taken for the purpose of tempting God. It's an old recording presented as genuine. Let's test it. Does anyone have any doubt what the outcome would be? Let's go further. For those of us who subscribed to Gartmore Weekly Tapes (GWT) after the 1989 expulsion from TWI, we know that, at the very least, there are a couple of hundred samples of SITWI exist that were presented as genuine and, because they were recorded for a genuine worship purpose and not for the purpose of tempting God, they could very easily be subject to examination. For the record, I threw all mine out and steam cleaned the cabinet where I kept them. Now, my contention is that Wierwille faked it. These were people (in Gartmore) who had been taught to do this by Wierwille himself or by Wierwille's followers. My contention is that they faked it. Prove it? I could, if I had the tapes and sent them to a competent linguist, I could demonstrate the accuracy of my contention (by show of hands, how many people have a SHRED of doubt what the outcome would be?) There is a catch with Gartmore. Considering this is a European audience about which I know absolutely nothing, there exists a very real possibility that someone speaking in tongues and interpreting was knowingly conning everyone by speaking a language he or she knew full well. Because we cannot identify the speakers, we cannot read absolute confirmation from the speaking of an actual language. But it would at least give us something to investigate and some possible indication, still disprovable, that the experience was actually producing a language. But even if we were to determine that Wierwille and all those GWT speakers were not producing a real language, I agree, it would not prove that your experience was not genuine. It would be a hint and a half for anyone with a shred of personal integrity. But it would not be proof of your self-delusion. To prove that, you would have to [the remainder of this sentence has been censored by the committee to defend the faith against the methods of SATAN]! I defy any holder of these tapes, be it Wierwille's, GWT or any other sample, to submit those tapes to a competent, unbiased linguist for analysis to determine whether an actual language is being spoken. Or send them to me and I'll do it. It would not prove that everyone who practiced SIT in TWI faked it, but is sure as heck would prove that the fakery was widespread.

Yes, I'm just being flippant.

Summer of Sam