Miracle Of Healed Vision Or A Hoax?

[.god]

My initial reaction is that you've been reading Josh McDowell or someone influenced by him.

That could be, don't remember specifically reading him though. At the time of writing I believed most points to have been my own, but I could just be using someone else's arguments I heard somewhere.Thanks for the feedback. Your statement about "speaking in tongues" to be easily learned behavior doesn't sound convincing to me. Have you tried it? There is probably a thread just on this issue, I will see if I can find it.

 

Have you tried reading all the testimonials (they're in the testimonies section) on this website? You said you don't think anyone has been in your shoes, but having read all the testimonials on this site, including many of those that were lost with the last board crash a few years back, I hazard to say many of the posters who have been thru here have not only have had extremely similar or even more extreme experiences. It may surprise you that the tales you tell and the questions you ask are not in the least unusual, but rather very, very common.

 

Many of them address speaking in tongues even.

[.god]

Hey TA,

 

Interesting you're calling your search a BFS... but I think you've got your graph set up all wrong. If it's truly a search of breadth, why are you only restricted to the christian religion? Why are you not including all modern religions - Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, Buddhism, Shintoism.. just to name a few. Might as well add a branch for the old religions as well, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse. And if you have it set up as 2 branches per religion (christian god exists/does not exist), then are you going to set up 2 branches for all others as well? ie. allah exists/does not exist, zeus exists/does not exist?

 

Or does it make more sense to set up a tree with all religions including a branch for "no religion" .. since almost all belief systems are mutually exclusive. At this point, the way you've set it up, there isn't much "depth" anyway so a DFS seems rather pointless?

 

 

Anyway, to the topic at hand.. I'm not sure exactly how what you have categorized could be determined as clear evidence. If you are going to go by personal accounts, then you had better be ready to consider belief in UFO's, alien abductions, Bigfoot, Thetans, scientology, mormonism, ghosts, chi, demons, fairies.. the list could go on and on.

 

First off, consider Mormonism - prophets speak over others with stunning frequency in their church. I've read plenty of similar tales about prophets and visions from the Mormon religion. Angels, demons, exorcisms, magic underwear.. these are part and parcel of their religion.

There are numerous testimonials from ex-mormons if you are interested at a peek into their religion -

http://www.exmormon.org/stories.htm

http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/index.php?bn=exmobb_biography

 

Another verbal account of a miracle I already told in this thread. I can still honestly say that I said everything as he told me. The explanations offered here are not sufficient for me to debunk the miracle. How do I know the guy did not lie to me?

I'm curious if you had any thoughts on the explanation I offered you in this thread. As I stated, I don't really considered it a miracle, and neither did my explanation assume the possibility of the guy of lying. I'm positive in fact that as far as he is concerned, he is telling the truth as it happened to him.

http://exchristian.net/testimonies/2004/07/my-rise-to-christianity-and.html

 

He has no reason to lie, but in the end he is only telling the story of what he believes happened to him and his explanation of it. Just because you trust the man to tell the truth does not mean that you must also trust that his memory is excellent, or that you must trust his analysis of his experiences is complete and accurate.

 

I highly encourage you to google for stories by ex-muslims, ex-scientologists, ex-anything.. and read up.

 

In the meantime, I always love the work Derren Brown does:

The Messiah series:

voodoo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW2yKlNFFuU

astrology -

one touch -

cold reading - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G18NfN76bAs

instant conversion to christianity - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sq-YUdq1OI

[.god]

I think Derren Brown says it best regarding "belief" in under a minute:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjdukSPIf6M

[Jeff H]

Trueagnostic,

 

I think that what .god has mentioned here is very important - just because someone is not telling the truth, does not necessarily mean they are "lying" - or at least, not intentionally. People believe many things, and they will tell you what they believe to be the "truth" - so in this sense, they are not "lying" to you with the intent to deceive you. But at the same time, what they say is not necessarily true. Just like someone who says they have seen Bigfoot, and they may honestly believe it. But that doesn't mean they actually did see Bigfoot. The point is that we must examine the truth of their claims, not their honesty. I'm sure you are aware of that, but it's something to keep in mind.

 

I wanted to bring more detail to one point you mentioned, and that is speaking in tongues, or "glossolalia." On my own search for the truth, this was one of the hurdles I had to overcome, since I came from a Pentecostal background and had heard many sincere people I knew (including my own parents) speak in these unknown languages. It's somewhat of a tricky thing to disprove, as well, since unless you know all the languages in the world, you can't really say with much confidence "it's not a real language." However, on my search, I found a couple good sources that helped me determine what exactly this glossolalia was. As it turns out, glossolalia is not restricted to Christian charismatics (it happens in various other religious experiences), and as such it has a natural explanation. It is more of a "cultural" thing, where people are taught or coached to speak it - whether or not they realize that that has been done. Often it is the natural result of growing up in a church where this sort of thing happens - we hear it done, and then we do it ourselves eventually. At any rate, here are a few links that may help you out:

 

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/joe...l/miracles.html - on this one, go down to "Divine Experiences" for a short explanation of glossolalia

http://www.religioustolerance.org/tongues5.htm

http://www.ctsfw.edu/library/files/pb/1599 - PDF file

 

If you're still looking for more information, all three of these links mention a guy by the name of William Samarin, a linguist who has studied glossolalia extensively. Do a Google search for his name and you should come up with some more results. I hope this helps, and good luck on your continuing search for truth

[Thackerie]

My initial reaction is that you've been reading Josh McDowell or someone influenced by him.

That could be, don't remember specifically reading him though. At the time of writing I believed most points to have been my own, but I could just be using someone else's arguments I heard somewhere.Thanks for the feedback. Your statement about "speaking in tongues" to be easily learned behavior doesn't sound convincing to me. Have you tried it? There is probably a thread just on this issue, I will see if I can find it.

 

"Speaking in tongues" is easy – and it gets easier all the time with practice. I was never a fundamentalist and never believed in it, but I've always been interested in religion. When I was in college a handful of obnoxious students tried to recruit me into a cult (The Way International), so just for my own amusement, I told them I already had the "gift of tongues" and demonstrated it to them several times. (Just open your mouth, utter a bunch of syllables in the same cadence/pitch as if you were speaking a real sentence, and let their imagination take it from there.)

 

Some of the cultists even claimed to be able to interpret what I was saying. To them, it was something about the glory of Jesus and his promise to return soon. (Actually, what I was thinking silently while I said my nonsense sentences aloud was more like, "what a bunch of idiots. They'll believe anything.")

 

Of course, when I got tired of playing with them after a few days and made it clear that I wanted nothing to do with The Way, they decided that it was not really the Holy Spirit speaking through me but the devil himself. They left me alone after that. Mission accomplished.

[upstarter]

This thread is fascinating. It's really the meat of why this site is here. I'm enjoying it thoroughly and have little add. .god did a great job explaining how eyes change with age. My brother wore glasses and was farsighted as a child and by adolescence did not need glasses anymore and has not since. He is now nearly 50. But that is neither here nor there really. Maybe he had a miraculous cure too.

 

What I really wanted to contribute was the link to some threads about speaking in tongues. Many people on this site (as Vigile has said) have spoken in tongues and can do it at will. I do not consider it something completely different from known language. In fact, the tongues spoken by people in my church always sounded like some form of gibberish Hebrew to me.

 

Anyway, here is the link to a couple of really great threads on the topic. I hope you enjoy it.

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=2222&hl=

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?show...=23227&st=0

 

Heather

[Ouroboros]

-- Most christians in my church "speak in tongues". Although there was some research suggesting glossolalia is a learned phenomenon I still find it extremely puzzling. From long time experience of observing the phenomenon I can say it is almost impossible to copy as it is so unlike regular language.

Just FYI, I still speak in tongues, and in the same style/kind of tongues too, as when I was Christian. So here I am, a denier of Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, and I'm supposedly still have the "gift?" Kind of proves glossolalia is a skill and not supernatural.

[florduh]

-- Most christians in my church "speak in tongues". Although there was some research suggesting glossolalia is a learned phenomenon I still find it extremely puzzling. From long time experience of observing the phenomenon I can say it is almost impossible to copy as it is so unlike regular language.

Just FYI, I still speak in tongues, and in the same style/kind of tongues too, as when I was Christian. So here I am, a denier of Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, and I'm supposedly still have the "gift?" Kind of proves glossolalia is a skill and not supernatural.

 

 

Oh yeah? So say something in Glossa.

 

Seriously, are those babblings able to be written down? Do the words have correct spellings and syntax? Definitions?

[Ouroboros]

Shakabahaba... It's hard to write down. I'm not sure how to spell the words! It's easy to just say a phrase of random words and make it sound cool, but it doesn't mean jack.

[Jeff H]

The thing that started making me skeptical about speaking in tongues is that I would listen to people doing it in my church and it would always sound very similar. I mean, our Pentecostal church was actually very conservative (as far as Pentecostal churches go, I guess), so other than people quietly "praying" in tongues, we would only get the odd "message from God" - spoken in tongues and then interpreted by someone else. There was one lady who was often the person that did this, and I started to notice that every time she said something, it always started off like this: "Ah-shah-kooo-liah de-da wa-see." That would be repeated several times as well throughout this message, with only slight variation. This always got interpreted differently, usually according to some sort of Scripture, but it got me thinking - she always seemed to say the same words, and she always seemed to repeat herself. How exactly does this language, whatever one it is, work? That started me onto the skeptical road, and is probably one of the major reasons why I am no longer a Christian today - it taught me to question all that I had been brought up to believe with more than just a casual questioning.

[Neon Genesis]

Besides which, where do Christians get the idea that speaking in tongues = gibberish? I thought that when the apostles spoke in tongues in the bible, they were speaking in actual human languages, not made-up wannabe Star Wars-sounding crap? And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a verse in the bible that said the gifts of the Holy Spirit ended after the apostles died? I thought that only the apostles could pass down the gifts of the Holy Spirit but the people who had the gifts passed down to them couldn't?

[trueagnostic]

As always thanks for the comments. I have read them and plan to reply tomorrow (although I was planning to close my participation in the discussion as I wanted to dedicate myself to research on evolution --already checked out "Selfish Gene" and 2 other Dawkins books from the library). But I am getting insightful ideas from this discussion as well, so I will stay as long as I can/there is interest.

You are making me think, really think (not that I can be easily convinced, long road to go still)

[mwc]

Shakabahaba... It's hard to write down. I'm not sure how to spell the words! It's easy to just say a phrase of random words and make it sound cool, but it doesn't mean jack.

You could do it if you had the spirit. Faker! Besides, isn't it one to talk and another to interpret? Double faker!

 

mwc

[mwc]

Besides which, where do Christians get the idea that speaking in tongues = gibberish? I thought that when the apostles spoke in tongues in the bible, they were speaking in actual human languages, not made-up wannabe Star Wars-sounding crap? And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a verse in the bible that said the gifts of the Holy Spirit ended after the apostles died? I thought that only the apostles could pass down the gifts of the Holy Spirit but the people who had the gifts passed down to them couldn't?

Paul's version of tongues is different than Acts. Acts was basically all languages all at once (the listener heard them in their native tongue, but some said they were drunk indicating not everyone heard something coherent) but Paul's was just a copy of the Greek oracles (babbling with an interpreter). Take a guess as to why we only have Paul's version around today.

 

The "gifts" ended with the apostolic period because those that came after couldn't do any magic tricks and so they wrote that the "gifts" ended with the apostolic period. Just as before this the Jews couldn't do anything "prophetic" so they declared an end to the time of the prophets. The Jews said that all the prophetic crap would return in the end times. So the xians said their guys could do all that. The apostolic period ended and, guess what, all that stuff is supposed to start happening in the end times. What a surprise. Some guy in the distant past could do tricks, but then it stopped for no good reason, but it will all start again in some future end times. Just not in the here and now.

 

So get ready.

 

It could happen any second.

 

 

mwc

[Ouroboros]

You could do it if you had the spirit. Faker! Besides, isn't it one to talk and another to interpret? Double faker!

 

Wait... that's the interpretation of what I said, isn't it? You got the spirit of discernment, dude. Awesome! We only need to find a prophet to tell the future too, then we're almost a complete X-Men team.

 

Look, there goes Glossolaliaman, Discernmentman, and Prophetman! We're saved!

 

You are making me think, really think (not that I can be easily convinced, long road to go still)

Isn't it sad in a way? You would think people would learn to think and be critical, but they're not. (No offense) I agree with others who is starting to point out that the school system needs a reform, and that one thing that goes to the top of the list is: learning to be critical and to think.

[trueagnostic]

I want to say what I think about "speaking in tongues".

According to the New Testament, is it one of the known languages or gibberish?

It can be both --language and "meaningless" speech. The book of Acts which describes the first time christians spoke in tongues, says they spoke in normal languages that they didn't know. Apostle Paul however, says that this language cannot be understood by people. He dedicates a whole chapter in 1st Corinth to the subject

1 Cor 14:8For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. The purpose of such practice is to have "spirit talk to God about what we cannot express in words", it is thought to be an "angelic language". So, technically if it can be shown that glossolalia is not a language, which does not go against the church teaching. And it was in fact shown by linguists that it is not a language (thanks for the links!).

I have observed the "angelic speech" many times (just yesterday attended another prayer service ) and have heard of accounts of it being a foreign language that the person speaks without knowing it. It would be quite helpful in my search if I find somebody who at least can attest to the second. I know of one person-- Grigoriy Zinchenko who lives in New York now. I already described the episode earlier as he came to Soviet Union from germany and at one of prayers an old lady started speaking to him in a perfect german. My family regularly sends a check for an orphanage house he established in Ukraine, so I know his phone number and could call. Of course the evidence is not scientifically verifiable. How can you tell he is not lieing about the story, the woman did not lie (by pretending she didn't know german when in fact she knew), and at last he did not hear voices in his head..? So this will not convince a reader here, but for me that would constitute another however insignificant evidence for christianity. For one, christians in general don't lie, for second, the woman was probably known to him and to village who would know about the level of her education, for the third, that's just as much chance he was scisofrenic as he wasn't.

The first one is more tricky. So what do I think about incoherent type of tongues? The comments here and research I read cast a shadow of doubt on this supernatural phenomenon.

 

As for doubting part:

1. This apparently can be a learned phenomenon

As Thackerie described he could learn to do it well enough to pretend he was a genuine speaker of tongues (btw, that's a hilarious story!) The crosscultural research on glossolalia also show that speakers of tongues in different regions develop distinct dialects of tongues. I observed that no one in my church can speak the way they speak in asia, for example. Moreover there is a teaching that when you want to be "baptized in Holy Spirit" you need to open your mouth and mutter whatever comes out. I heard those who pray for you explain that "on the first time you might get one or two words, but with time you will learn to speak more, and your language will get richer" I also know of a guy in my church I know well who speaks almost exact same words that his older brother does.

 

2. There are some patterns in the tongues speech which, if being interpreted are interpreted differently.

Regular speakers of tongues seem to repeat the same phrase with slight variations as Jeff H noted he observed in his church. I imagine if it is also interpreted and is interpreted differently all the time, then there is contradiction.

 

As for still believing part:

1. In some cases glosolalia is almost certainly not a learned phenomenon.

There are accounts of getting "the gift of speaking in tongues" without having other people pray for you or even without ever having prior experience with church. During my not so long life I have heard a dozen or so stories from real people I met/heard in church who started speaking in tongues while praying about it alone in the woods/field/etc. If that doesn't quite support the assertion that it can be not a learned phenomenon the following story does.

Lydia Prince, the wife of a renown Bible teacher Derek Prince tells how she was baptized in holy spirit. (All her conversion to christianity happened in her home without ever having connections with church, just reading the Bible) This is an excerpt from "Appointment to Jerusalem" (translated by me from russian, but there is a book in english as well)

 

"Suddenly I realized that inside of me I heard a voice saying something in some foreign language. " Erna (her friend, transl) was right" --I thought. "You overdid it and now you are going insane!" I put my hand on my lips to make these unknown words stop -- but the pressure inside my chest grew stronger and stronger. I did not say it aloud, but in my mind I said: "God, if what I have inside is not yours, take it away" I waited for a while, but the voice wouldn't disappear. "God if this voice is from you, help me not be afraid, let me receive this from you!". I took my hand off my lips.

Right away, the words that I heard were inside my chest, started coming of my mouth and I understood that it was me who was speaking. It was hard to believe it was my own voice. What language did I speak? I knew English and German pretty well, but I was sure it was neither of the languages. How was it possible that I was saying word that I never heard so legibly? Nevertherless they had such a rythmic beauty that reminded me of poetry" (Appointment to Jerusalem)

 

If what she is saying is not a lie, how did she start speaking in this "foreign language" without ever having heard it?

 

2. I have seen some cases of speaking in tongues and interpreting in which the "tongue" part varied constantly.

There were two older men, one of which "spoke tongues" and another interpreted, they spoke to me. It was quite impressive because, first) the tongue part was very rich, I couldn't make out a pattern 2) the interpretation part was pretty much the same or of proportional length to the tongue one3) what he told me was quite reflective to where I was spiritually even though they saw me for the first time. I said it was impressive, but not convincing; if they had told my deepest secrets in detail, then that would be convincing.

 

3. Latest scientific research does not contradict what the bible teaches

The recent study (2006) on the phenomenon using brain imaging is interesting. Pictures of brain taken during the prayer in tongues show substantial decrease in frontal lobe activity as compared to prayer in normal language (which means the person praying in tongues is not thinking as much) This aligns with the bible teaching that it is "spirit praying to God", so the person's thinking part of the brain is idle (you can watch the study here (quite interesting) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZbQBajYnEc)

 

4. And the last one: how do you in the right mind learn to speak this "language"? I understand you can memorize a phrase or two, but some people have greater "vocabulary" than that. These are average people (some I would guess have pretty low IQ) without special linguistic skills. I tried to copy people speaking and it is next to impossible (for me). It is very hard to memorize these phrases at will.

 

Conclusion:

My believing part says that Bible is right, and there can be genuine speaking in tongues these days. Even if some things appear weird they have a heavenly explanation. For example, maybe God wants christians to learn speak in tongues like a new born baby has to learn the language over the time. There are probably frauds out there (bible speaks about such things) but that doesn't disprove the existance of real tongues. I may even get lucky and find a solid data for a case when God uses tongues as real language that the speaker doesn't know. What if, on coming to a next prayer some old lady (that just immigrated to US from some russian village) will tell me in pure English to stop doubting and get saved? (this can be interpreted as joke if you will

 

The doubting part of me says this is probably a natural phenomenon. In one of the articles I read that there is such explanation, but I couldn't find it. Does anyone know where to read about it? It could be that Samarin --researcher on glossolalia could have the answer, but his scientific articles aren't free as much as I searched. My personal (unbelieving) theory is that when people get into state of high emotional tension their brain becomes capable of producing this language. With the advances in neuroscience the cause of this phenomenon will be known and (who knows?) may even turn out to be a part of inhibited evolutionary mechanism.

 

Somehow, I am a slow writer, so next time I want to say why I only consider Christian God and Atheism to be candidates for truth and not all other religions.

ps: read through two chapters of "selfish gene" -- interesting, but so far just speculations, as the author says.

[Neon Genesis]

But you yourself say in your post at the beginning that you don't have any actual evidence and all of this is vague. Why accept something that's vague as "evidence"? It's intellectually dishonest and hypocritical for you to admit that this isn't even actual evidence, then turn around and expect others to believe it. Make up your mind which it is. Your argument about the woman alone magically speaking in tongues is not convincing in the least. If she was alone, how do you know she actually spoke in tongues? If her word alone counts as evidence, then Muhammad's claims must be true too since he was alone when he was sent a vision and wrote the Quran when he didn't know how to write because obviously people who are alone when magical things happen must be right because they say so. Oh wait, it only works for Christians because Christians are always perfect, right? Your claims that Christians generally don't lie is bullshit and is also offensive to non-Christians because you're implicating that only Christians tell the truth and everyone else are liars. I suppose Ted Haggard wasn't a "real" Christian, then? Also, when the Holy Spirit takes over a person's body to speak in tongues, isn't this contradicting freewill?

[Jeff H]

I know of one person-- Grigoriy Zinchenko who lives in New York now. I already described the episode earlier as he came to Soviet Union from germany and at one of prayers an old lady started speaking to him in a perfect german. My family regularly sends a check for an orphanage house he established in Ukraine, so I know his phone number and could call. Of course the evidence is not scientifically verifiable. How can you tell he is not lieing about the story, the woman did not lie (by pretending she didn't know german when in fact she knew), and at last he did not hear voices in his head..? So this will not convince a reader here, but for me that would constitute another however insignificant evidence for christianity. For one, christians in general don't lie, for second, the woman was probably known to him and to village who would know about the level of her education, for the third, that's just as much chance he was scisofrenic as he wasn't.

 

The problem with stories like these is that stories always get embellished over time. It's just natural - we do it all the time. The fish we caught last week goes from being 5 inches to being 8 inches to being 12 inches, and it's not that we're "lying" on purpose - it's just the natural tendency to forget bits of information and just fill them in as we go along. What I would suspect from this story is that he heard a woman speaking something that sounded vaguely like German. He then concluded that it was, indeed, German (as he wouldn't have known she didn't speak it at the time anyway), and then his mind subconsciously filled in some of the parts he didn't understand. I mean, in a prayer service or whatever, where there might be more than one person talking (although I don't know what your services are like over there), it's not uncommon to not necessarily hear everything someone is saying. We fill it in by context, and if the language sounds sort of German-ish, he could fill it in as being such.

 

Then, of course, over time, as he tells the story to more and more people, he seems to "remember" it being more and more clear and more "perfect German." The details change slightly over time, and now hearing a woman mumble something that sounds like German is now a story about a woman praying in perfect German about some sort of spiritual matter. That would be my explanation for the story, and it doesn't involve any sort of "lying" or deception - just the natural tendency of people to forget and embellish.

 

As Thackerie described he could learn to do it well enough to pretend he was a genuine speaker of tongues (btw, that's a hilarious story!) The crosscultural research on glossolalia also show that speakers of tongues in different regions develop distinct dialects of tongues. I observed that no one in my church can speak the way they speak in asia, for example. Moreover there is a teaching that when you want to be "baptized in Holy Spirit" you need to open your mouth and mutter whatever comes out. I heard those who pray for you explain that "on the first time you might get one or two words, but with time you will learn to speak more, and your language will get richer" I also know of a guy in my church I know well who speaks almost exact same words that his older brother does.

 

More specifically, people's "tongues" in different regions only use syllables that are present in their own native languages. So in churches like mine, I should only ever hear "English" syllables. I won't ever hear any Chinese phonemes, unless there's a person visiting from China. However, over in China, it should be the exact opposite...this lends more credibility that it's a natural language, and not an "angelic" language - as it is somewhat unlikely that angels have different dialects

 

1. In some cases glosolalia is almost certainly not a learned phenomenon.

There are accounts of getting "the gift of speaking in tongues" without having other people pray for you or even without ever having prior experience with church. During my not so long life I have heard a dozen or so stories from real people I met/heard in church who started speaking in tongues while praying about it alone in the woods/field/etc. If that doesn't quite support the assertion that it can be not a learned phenomenon the following story does.

Lydia Prince, the wife of a renown Bible teacher Derek Prince tells how she was baptized in holy spirit. (All her conversion to christianity happened in her home without ever having connections with church, just reading the Bible) This is an excerpt from "Appointment to Jerusalem" (translated by me from russian, but there is a book in english as well)

 

I am not sure if I entirely understand what you mean with this point, but I'd just like to point out that no, it doesn't always have to be "learned" in the sense that others "teach" it to you. Sometimes it just comes from observation of it in the past, or perhaps just as a result of an emotional experience. I mean, when you consider that if tongues are not a real phenomenon, it must have started somewhere, we can understand that some people may be more inclined to produce some sort of "unintelligible speaking" when they get into a highly emotional state. Of course, this hasn't been shown scientifically, but it's at least somewhat plausible. The story you mention may be a case of someone who has this sort of tendency, and while I can't tell from what you said, whether she had past experience in a church setting and saw tongues being spoken, even an experience of this sort could lend toward it being a "learned" behaviour. Just like I was taught that curse words were "bad words" and was never taught them by my parents, but from experience with hearing others, especially in, say, movies, I find myself now having to stop myself from saying them when I stub my toe or whatever. I was never "taught" them, but I observed them and therefore "learned" them...

 

2. I have seen some cases of speaking in tongues and interpreting in which the "tongue" part varied constantly.

There were two older men, one of which "spoke tongues" and another interpreted, they spoke to me. It was quite impressive because, first) the tongue part was very rich, I couldn't make out a pattern 2) the interpretation part was pretty much the same or of proportional length to the tongue one3) what he told me was quite reflective to where I was spiritually even though they saw me for the first time. I said it was impressive, but not convincing; if they had told my deepest secrets in detail, then that would be convincing.

 

Sounds like someone who has had much experience with speaking in tongues, then. If, as you said, someone's vocabulary becomes "more rich" as they do it more, then this older man has likely been doing it for a long time. As for what he said to you, you seem to understand that people often make vague statements that can be interpreted by the person receiving them as "exactly what I needed to hear" or whatever. Just like fortune tellers and psychics. "I'm sensing that there is a gentleman in your life who is experiencing some sort of pain..."

 

3. Latest scientific research does not contradict what the bible teaches

The recent study (2006) on the phenomenon using brain imaging is interesting. Pictures of brain taken during the prayer in tongues show substantial decrease in frontal lobe activity as compared to prayer in normal language (which means the person praying in tongues is not thinking as much) This aligns with the bible teaching that it is "spirit praying to God", so the person's thinking part of the brain is idle (you can watch the study here (quite interesting) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZbQBajYnEc)

 

That is an interesting video you linked to. I just got finished a course in Physiological Psychology and we looked into some of the major brain areas and how they control our behaviours. The frontal lobe is normally associated with higher brain functions - thoughts, control, associations, etc. - but the prefrontal cortex that was shown in the brain scan images on there is primarily associated with inhibition. In other words, when that is activated, we have greater "control" of ourselves - for instance, when we touch a hot object, we will reflexively pull our hand away, but when we are carrying a hot pan, we can often control this reflex until we have a chance to set it down. When this area is turned off, however, is when we are uninhibited. In other words, what this shows is that there is a lack of inhibition allowing these people to just sort of "let the words flow." Whether that is the Holy Spirit controlling them or just prior learned behaviours doing so is a completely different subject. All it shows is that when people speak in tongues, something in the brain changes - which is exactly what we'd expect from anything we think or do.

 

4. And the last one: how do you in the right mind learn to speak this "language"? I understand you can memorize a phrase or two, but some people have greater "vocabulary" than that. These are average people (some I would guess have pretty low IQ) without special linguistic skills. I tried to copy people speaking and it is next to impossible (for me). It is very hard to memorize these phrases at will.

 

Practice makes perfect? Seems pretty simple to me...as you learn to become uninhibited during this strange experience, you start to let the words flow more freely. And as you practice that more, you get better at it...

[Neon Genesis]

Another question, why is it that in all the examples presented in this thread of people speaking in tongues, it's always been of them either speaking in an unknown language or in something that sounds like a foreign language, like German? Where are the people who never knew English in their life but were suddenly able to speak it and understand English perfectly because of the Holy Spirit?

[chefranden]

Here's another way to test the faith to see if it is real. Call it chef's way because no other fool would give it a try.

 

Start out in about your place: maybe yes but probably not. Take a page from an old master like say Kierkegaard and his leap of faith. Sure wide swaths of it are apparent nonsense, but faith survives on the absurd. When you leap, leap hard. No just sticking your toe in. Find "Sin Ally" in your city or town, get a bible, and stand on busy corner of "Sin Ally" and start preaching. Don't worry if you don't know much, because the HS will tell you what to say. Then decide you are pretty damn good preacher because you attract a crowd of hecklers, and some people chuck shit at you.

 

Now comes the good part. Make your wife throw away her cherished but evil Beatle albums. Sell almost every thing you have to finance a move to Bible college. Make your wife and 2 kids live on $600 a month for 4 years (well actually $540 don't forget to tithe) while you faithfully and seriously study the word. Listen to your best collage friend go on about his talks with the Lord and try not to get jealous because the Lord never talks with you. Well that's because you have real faith.

 

Graduate from Collage and take a calling to be a missionary church planter in the poorest rural region of your state. Make your family live on about a grand a month minus tithe and taxes and go about trying to convince the heathen Catholics and Lutherans that they are going to hell, because they are not holding their lips just so like Jesus wants them too. Preach to a church of poor ignorant folks that don't know that there is another definition to a word like fast. They'd sure like to rise up for the Lord, but they have to figure out how to feed the kids this month and get brakes for their 15 year old rusted out Ford before they can rise up. Preach to your poor about how God loves them to death and has their best interest at heart, while trying to suppress thoughts of manna, water from rocks, and feeding multitudes.

 

All this time be expecting the Lord to show up. You've been acting on faith for some years now. Your darling wife is showing some signs of wear and is feed up to the teeth with the busy bodies at church. Your extended family thinks you are a nut ball. You are down on your knees in tears wondering/just asking God to stop by for 10 minutes for coffee or tea just once. You get fired over doctrine from the little church you've worked yourself to a frazzle over. Your wife decides she is done with God. You get a job in a snack food plant and try to revive a community church. They end up paying $25 a week and you need it to survive. By now you are curled up on the bathroom floor for a couple of hours crying every tear you have left for some little sign that you haven't just wasted a decade or so. No sign.

 

It's a hell of a test, but it ended showing no God. I recommend using logic instead.

[chefranden]

...have heard of accounts of it being a foreign language that the person speaks without knowing it...

 

Perhaps it would do you good to study the difference between evidence and hearsay.

 

The guy that gets a check from your family wouldn't have any ulterior reason for telling a story would he?

 

Did the woman know what she was saying in the language she did not know? Where there any other German speakers there who were not affiliated with Grigoriy Zinchenko that could attest that it was perfect German and the Grigoriy's translation was actually what she said? There may have been a 1000 witnesses to the event, but if none spoke German all they could attest to was that the woman spoke something unintelligible to them and that Grigoriy Zinchenko said it was perfect German.

 

Did you get to critically cross examine any of the witnesses with devils advocate questions? If not you are delivering to us hearsay of hearsay.

 

 

All of them could be telling the truth including the woman, and yet it wouldn't be evidence of anything other than the event took place.

[.god]

Even if some things appear weird they have a heavenly explanation.

 

Let me relate a story about my glossolalia experience.

First off, I've don't really know anything about speaking in tongues, nor have I ever heard or seen it done. I've never been religious, so I have no first-hand experience with any flavors or western or eastern religions. I've only heard about it when I started reading the stories on this website. Which is probably why only now I remember my own experience since I don't associate it with "speaking in tongues", but the phenomenon sounds pretty much the same even though it was for a different purpose.

 

I was making a long distance 6 hour drive back home and it was really late, almost 10pm or so and we were about 3-4 hours into it. The day had been exhausting since it was a weekend trip, and I was damn tired. I'd been driving the entire way on a really boring stretch of freeway. There are mini-cycles to the body's circadian rhythm and I was hitting a lull at that hour finding it really hard to stay awake. My girlfriend was very tired as well so I couldn't get her to talk to me to help me stay awake. The radio was no help either, so... I decided to just start talking to myself. Where as speaking sentences that makes sense to oneself actually requires some effort (and then there the natural gaps and stops while you think of something else to say), I quickly found it was much easier just to string together senseless syllables in the cadence of speech. You know the old Charlie Brown cartoons where the adults always talk in "wa wa wawawa wawa waaaaaa"?. Well, that was me, but on steroids. I had different sounding syllables going, intonations with questions, explanations, whatever. It was a conversation with myself, a pit pat pattering to keep myself awake and my brain engaged on some level. We all know the intonations and patterns of speech, I'm not sure it requires any processing of language or semantics to imitate it. Young babies do it all the time when they are learning to speak, by imitating the cadence of the adults around them.

 

Anyway, my girlfriend probably thought I'd gone crazy by then, but she was too tired to care lol. So I carried on for half an hour, quite loudly over the roar of the freeway, nearly hypnotizing myself to keep myself focused on driving and staying awake. Worked quite well, but not something I'd normally want to do. If it wasn't so deserted in the area I would have just rather pulled off to the side of the road and waited it out.

Interestingly, after I was a bit more awake again, I saw a UFO. It was right next to the freeway about a mile down the stretch, and the skies were pitch black. But there was a formation of bright white lights, about 5 to 7 lights you could see quite clearly, moving very very quickly zipping in and out, near and far, absolutely silent during my approach. I just kept staring at it as I got closer and closer wondering how come none of the other cars were slowing down to get a better look at it. Even though I am completely skeptical and don't believe in alien UFO's, I thought wow, this would be cool if it actually was one. Finally it clicked in my mind what the object was. For some reason, someone was flying a crop-duster type biplane in wild random loops right next to the freeway, loaded with really bright lights. Once I figured that out, all the zipping lights made perfect sense as the object resolved itself to my brain's spacial perception. The lights were mounted on different wings and would seem to shrink and grow rapidly as the plane slowly twisted and twirled in the sky. It was definitely a bizarre thing to be doing with a crop-duster next to the freeway at 10p and I always wondered if they were doing it as some prank that night.

 

So not only did god save me from falling asleep that night and ending up a tragic statistic, I was also saved from being nearly abducted by an alien UFO

 

Mere coincidence? No way!

 

What are the chances of flipping 10 heads in a row on a coin? No way! that would be a coincidence right?

I don't know if you watched the youtube video, but you can now see what Derren looks like trying to flip 10 heads in a row. Took him 9 hours of constant flipping before that sequence of random events came up.

 

As for different languages, no one actually needs to learn a different language to be able to mimic it. School kids do it all the time, particularly to bully minorities. In the states we may not get as much exposure to as many languages as someone in Europe would. But even though I don't speak Korean, I can imitate the sounds and syllables pretty well given what I've seen on TV. I speak both Japanese and Spanish and those two languages have some words that are pronounced exactly the same (wholly different meanings though), and their syllables are very similar as well.

 

3. Latest scientific research does not contradict what the bible teaches

The recent study (2006) on the phenomenon using brain imaging is interesting. Pictures of brain taken during the prayer in tongues show substantial decrease in frontal lobe activity as compared to prayer in normal language (which means the person praying in tongues is not thinking as much) This aligns with the bible teaching that it is "spirit praying to God", so the person's thinking part of the brain is idle (you can watch the study here (quite interesting)

Hmm, I think I have read something about that study before. The video is interesting, but while it may not contradict the bible, I'm not sure how it supports biblical teachings.

To me, glossolalia doesn't seem to have anything to do with normal language. It doesn't require grammar, vocabulary, or logically assembling a sentence that conveys communication.

It would be interesting to compare the CAT scans to people who are told to just hum some random tune of their own making, first imitating the patterns of music then imitating the patterns of speech. A variety of scenarios should be included, from faking a foreign tongue to doing reciting shakespeare. Honestly the study seemed a bit too limited, but then that may be because I think their assumptions were incorrect - that glossolalia has anything to do with communicating in a language. And in my one experience it seems to be something useful for entering a trance of altered state of consciousness.

 

As for "speaking in tongues" in church, expectations, subtle suggestions can play a huge role in human behavior.

I know you are all probably sick of Derren Brown, but check out his Seance special - especially the girl who the dead person speaks thru and the change in her voice. I know that I am highly suggestible, and it is interesting when I his stuff that even just watching videos on youtube, how his subtle suggestions get planted in my head without my noticing it. Even more interesting is watching the videos over again to try to locate exactly where and how that suggestion is implanted:

 

 

But the problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is anecdotal evidence from a limited perspective.

That fact is probably best illustrated by Derren's "The System" special as well as the following the clip from that show where he phrases it more eloquently than I ever will:

 

[Vigile]

Trueagnostic, if you want to be truly intellectually honest, I suggest you attend a Mormon church service for educational purposes. It\'s my understanding that during the service members stand up and give testimony, very similar to the testimonies you are relying upon as evidence in your quest for truth.

 

Like the charismatic xians you are familiar with, these people are equally honest and sincere and it is unlikely that they would lie for their faith.

 

Just a little story, when I was a christian I was drifting off to sleep one night. I opened my eyes and in front of my bed were two green eyes staring down at me. The eyes were large and spread far enough apart that I could see that this creature was larger than human. I was gripped with fear to the point I couldn\'t speak or move. I was certain it was a demon. Finally I was able to force my mouth to cry Jesus! and the eyes disappeared.

 

I gave this testimony to all my friends, the same way your friends and family gave you their testimony. It was very real and I saw it very clearly.

 

I know now that what I experienced was simply Sleep paralysis.

 

I hope you are getting my point. People can experience real things. The problem comes in the interpretation. Honest people with good intentions can be very wrong in their interpretations. This is why this type of testimony is virtually worthless as a means for uncovering whether or not a religion or anything else is valid.

 

My thoughts continue to lean toward the hypothesis that your questions are leading you closer and closer to shedding the meme that you have been struggling with. I can see that you really want to know what is right and true. In doing so, hold yourself to a high standard of evidentiary rules so that you don\'t get stuck running down rabbit trails of psuedo intellectualism. It will do you a world of good.

[Vigile]

Here's another story:

 

At one point of my life I was uber sincere in my quest to utterly immerse myself in all that god suposedly wanted for his followers. I truly wanted everything. I spent hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks begging god to give me the baptism of the holy spook. If anyone asked and sought harder I'd like to meet them.

 

Problem was, I wouldn't fake it. If it was going to happen, it wasn't going to happen with my help. It had to be the real thing, not something I conjured up in any way.

 

Every single prayer for this was met with deafening silence.

 

I even went to the pastor of my grandparent's church, an Ass of God church with a pastor whose father was famous for writing a book about being visited by angels. He laid hands on me and prayed. He told me to just start moving my mouth and speaking whatever came to mind. He told me that when I did this that eventually the holy ghost would take over. (Hopefully you can smell the bullshit in this). I sat there truly desiring, but also honest enough that I wouldn't do anything unless something came from outside myself.

 

Finally the pastor got frustrated and told me that I needed to spend several days in prayer and fasting and seeking and that god would finally bless me. I did and he didn't.

 

Like I said, I can make noises like any charismatic at will. It's just me. I've never experienced the glorious washing over that others have testified of. I know people who I believe and trust that told me they have. I'm dubious that their experiences were anything beyond emotion and brain phenomena.

[trueagnostic]

Trueagnostic, if you want to be truly intellectually honest, I suggest you attend a Mormon church service for educational purposes. It\'s my understanding that during the service members stand up and give testimony, very similar to the testimonies you are relying upon as evidence in your quest for truth.

 

I would love to. Since you probably had experience with them before, can you tell me how they treat outsiders? Can I just walk in and observe, or do I need connections like in masonry (I wasn't there either, but I heard it's not easy to get in)?

 

I will comment on the criticism and other comments (that I find fascinating) later.