Raf

So you're saying that if your method of turning coal into a diamond was invalid, you have not invalidated the truth that diamonds are produced by squeezing coal. It just means that no matter how much you believed, so to speak, what YOU unwrapped was not a diamond.

There's a leap from no one is doing it to no one CAN do it that I am not prepared to make. The Bible, to my reading, merely says it can be done. It says nothing about everyone claiming to do it should be presumed genuine until proved otherwise (or vice versa, to be fair). Believing that we, innocently, kidded ourselves should not detract from faith at all. If anything, it should inspire in the seeker a fervent quest for what SIT should be. In any event, chockfull, we're at loggerheads on the bigger, fatter claim issue. I will drop it.

P.S. Was the spiderman musical any good?

John! Well said. Except, of course, that has nothing to do with the fact that SIT is manifested in the senses realm and therefore can be observed and analyzed, unlike the resurrection, which can't. At least not today. So it is a different kind of question, despite similarities.

Vegas

Although the article I posted agrees with my conclusion, I would not have cited it in the original thread. I probably would havw gone to his sources and posted them. If Vern is somewhat biased, he at least provided useful info. This guy seems to have been on a mission. My bet is we would have spent too much time discussing why he shouldn't be ignored just because of his conclusion.

It would seem consistent to me that if the church at Corinth were exercising free vocalization under my definition, it might go a long way toward explaining why Paul felt such.a pressing need to spend time correcting them. But I suspect it would not explain the correction itself, which doesn't even seem to consider the possibility of fakery. But if you're thinking something else when you use the same term, maybe you're onto something. I can't tell.

I'm using Free Vocalization as a less abrasive synonym for lied and faked. how are you using it?

The purpose of this thread is to provide links that discuss the practice of speaking in tongues from a perspective of trying to determine what's actually taking place there. While not inherently a doctrinal discussion, it may provide resources that help us draw our conclusions in both doctrinal and practical (ie, "About the Way" or "Open") contexts. This first one agrees with me (did you think it wouldn't? Did you not see what happened when I posted something that didn't completely agree with me? heh heh heh). http://charlesdailey.net/TonguesHolton.html And yes, of course, he quotes Samarin. Shoot, if Samarin's wrong, I'll be wiping egg off my face for centuries. Oh, and feel free to post your own. A brief summary would be nice, but the only thing I request is that it's relevant.

And we're at 500 replies. Which would be considered remarkable if I didn't account for 470 of them. Anyway, I was thinking of starting a "SIT/linguistics online bibliography" where we can all post links to various studies, abstracts, and apologetics. Where would such a thing go? Not here. Doctrinal? I think that's probably the place most would look for such a thing, no? Thoughts? Then again, they all seem to just come back to Samarin. Is anyone else finding this?

Better?

I will wait until Monday and give other people a chance to participate, buuuuddddy

Roundabout?

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?