chockfull

Haters DOES describe behavior. It describes how people are acting. It is called "being a hater". It is a common term used in conversation in todays society. And apparently it hits REALLY close to home with you. Go figure.

Haters is describing the behavior. If someone isn't acting in that fashion then they have nothing to complain about. And if the mods are going to leave this thread open and allow YOU to continue to namecall and criticize, then it also has to be open for the same from the other side. I'll live with NO namecalling, and live with moderators locking this thread OR going back and editing ALL the posts where namecalling occurs. That's fair behavior. I suppose I'd also live with you developing a thick enough skin where you can take it as well as dish it out. I will not live in a hypocritical fashion where YOU are allowed to namecall, but I am not. And mods, if you are allowing this, you are not doing your job.

Once you remove the offensive language and terms from your posts I will consider your request. Until then, I'm just going to consider it in the category of "he can dish it out but can't take it".

"no man understands" or "no man understands him" - either phrase communicates the same thing. Someone speaks in a tongue, others don't understand. I know, REAL HARD TO COMPREHEND HERE. Nice try though. I knew I would give the haters a good time with this one!!!! So you have a different interpretation of I Cor. 14:2, where somehow it says others will understand? Please, enlighten us.

No, those are called miracles, which by definition go over and above standard definitions and behavior. Miracles also go over and above laws of physics, so no huge revelation there.

My read on this is that you think the "no man understands" portion of I Cor. 14:2 somehow doesn't apply to linguists. You expect that somehow linguists SHOULD be able to understand what is spoken, and if they can't that somehow proves it can't be done today. That's faulty logic. To me your problem is with what I Cor. 14:2 clearly states. And of COURSE you're going to try to frame the argument and conversation such that it doesn't look like you are challenging the Bible, because that doesn't look so good. But you ARE challenging the Bible. There's your logic problem again. I do take the promise of God and expect it to be fulfilled. I communicate with God, and no man understands. That promise IS fulfilled. I don't see a promise of God stating "SIT is a language". That would be a completely pointless promise. Promises of God are something that a believer can cling to for betterment of their life.

If you can twist up "no man understands him" into "the speaker will not understand himself" then perhaps reading comprehension is the root of your problem. If you take a step back and look at what that verse is trying to communicate, the primary idea of it is not making the point that tongues is a language. It's making the point giving instruction for SIT. Part of the instruction is that you are talking to God, the other part is that other people won't understand you while doing this. So I Cor. 14:2 is saying that when you SIT, you are communicating with God, and people won't understand. It is not making the point just because it uses the word "glossa" in it that the important part of the verse indicates that it is producing a real language spoken by someone living today. All of the argument over that verse is focusing on one word in the verse - "tongues", extracting it from its context, blowing it up out of proportion, and making the whole argument about that. No now we're going to the same point as we were previously. Trusting scripture, and using logic. I don't need "proof" to believe the Bible. If you do, then that's not my problem.

Or some people just trust that what I Cor. 14:2 says is accurate - that when you speak in tongues you don't speak to man, but to God, and no man understands. That is simple and clear in just about any Bible translation you care to look up. There is no accusation of anything around that verse not being genuine, like those that attack Mark 15 and say its a forgery. It is a simple, clear verse and that chapter has simple clear instruction. The only way the critics and haters try to get rid of this verse is by saying it applied then, but not today. I'll obviate the other hater logic which says that somehow we just aren't UNDERSTANDING this very clear verse properly. You're right. All I'm doing is reading it, noting that it's an epistle to the born-again believers after Christ's death thus it is to me, and believing it. I know that doesn't bode well for formulating huge strawman arguments to attack that verse, like linguists not finding languages and that supposedly being some kind of proof that tongues are fake, but that's all this whole thing is - man's ego, all setting something up to prove they are smarter than God. I've already explained this for those who are interested in trusting scripture and employing logic at the same time. Those who aren't interested in that, please feel free to ignore this post and continue on picking at logic and trying to prop up your linguists over scripture. By definition, if God says about tongues "no man understands", and if God is energizing the tongues to make them something special and spiritual outside of the ability of a human to make mouth noises, then God is well able to fulfill what He says in scripture to ensure a linguist will NOT find a language. Haters will call this an "excuse", but for my life, I choose to act as a "believer" who trusts scripture, not a "hater" who tries to break it. You see, God at His very nature will not overstep freedom of will, and God requires believing or faith out of His followers. As such, He doesn't really play the games of proving He exists or not, or proving scripture is reliable or not. For those who want to believe, there is that option. For those who want to argue about it, debate about it, try and break it, there is that option too. God isn't really interested in obtaining converts by the support of scientific proof of the spiritual. I'm sure this post will give the haters plenty of material to attack, so have at it

Guys, this conversation is getting to the point where it's not doing much for me anymore. I mean, basically we have me on one side of an argument, and then Raf, WordWolf, and geisha all jumping in with their viewpoints which oppose me. It's way too much work for me to have to refute a team of 3 all looking to poke holes in what I believe and am seeing in the research. I am neglecting other needful areas of my life all in exchange for a stupid argument on whether or not you can pray in tongues and not be a liar or a faker. My position and belief is that Corinthians is an epistle that applies to me. This is a mainstream Christian viewpoint. I've never heard except for the most extreme dispensationalists that Paul's letters are not for the modern Christian to study, apply and live life with. Thus Corinthians applies to me. Not to first century Christians, but somehow over 2000 years it all changed and none of it applies anymore. Corinthians is written to the church of the New Testament by extension from being addressed to a specific new Christian church in a given area. In Corinthians, I am instructed on gifts and manifestations of spirit. The instruction is pretty clear. It is clear enough that the questions I raise in linguistics research are similar to the ones that Charismatic Christians ask everywhere. There are no clear-cut proven answers in response to them, but it does seem that the majority of linguists who express an opinion on SIT are against it. So I may read this thread and read some of the research but at this point I am going to severely limit the amount of time I put into any aspect of it and am not going to post much here anymore. I am going to believe I Cor. 14, Corinthians, and my Bible as my standard for faith and practice. And I will evaluate man's facts and writings against that, and if there is a conflict, I'm going with scripture and my relationship with my Heavenly Father. I'll leave all the arguments about how many language phonomes you can fit on the head of a glossa sample to you guys. Have fun. Peace out.

geisha, your suggestion is appropriately condescending, simultaneously conveying a veiled concern while at the same time conveying that I am completely ignorant on the topic of linguistics to the point where simply a phone call to a linguist would clear all this up. What makes you think that #1 they would talk to me about the topic? and #2 that a casual conversation would somehow magically produce more substance in the methods they are using more than the peer reviewed journal articles that they are writing on the topic to maintain their tenure and advance their careers? Why don't you go to Amherst College, print up some of my objections to the general "research" on the topic and obtain comments and quotes on it from the linguists there? After all, it's your idea. The whole "God told me to tell you to do something" didn't work even when I was still in the Way ministry to have people dump off the work they didn't want to do themselves onto me.

OK, so this is a poorly written paper, similar to the one by the college student I mentioned. I brought up the same point you did about the sources of the paper being more reliable than the writing itself. Raf completely rejected that as a source, continuing to point out the guy was writing a college thesis. This paper, the first entry in the SIT Online Reading room, basically is almost exactly the same thing. A guy has 3 references to Samarin, two from a book that we haven't read, and the third from the article we are dissecting. The questions raised by me are raised in that paper. Why? Because there is an OBVIOUS contradiction between what linguists are concluding and what the Bible says about the topic. I'll comment on some of them. So here, the premise I'm measuring this against is I Cor. 14:2 when someone speaks in a tongue others don't understand. Here, a linguist with a PhD answers this question by saying "that is not ENTIRELY a valid argument". Note the use of language here. He is not saying "that argument is complete BS, bunk, malarkey". He is saying it is not entirely valid. So his conclusion is that argument is PARTIALLY valid. He brings up a valid point that part of linguistics involves "family trees" of language. The Romance languages, for example, have common Latin roots. The Russian languages have similarities. The Indian dialects have similarities. Most of the "trees" of language develop in similar geographic locations. Many linguists have familiarity with a certain tree of languages, so would be able to identify if they thought a glossa sample had words in that "family tree" of language. His opinion on the matter is if you ran a glossa sample by ALL of these people you could get coverage on MOST of the world's languages. Does this prove modern SIT doesn't produce a language? Not by any means. Another common objection and one I also brought up. By the definition in the Bible of SIT, you can include extinct languages. Stahike states here that in his OPINION you COULD test whether a language was a valid sample of an extinct language. What he leaves out there is this is just speaking in the terms of possibilities. He has never done this. And a SIT speaker WOULD NOT be able to tell Stahike WHICH EXTINCT LANGUAGE they were speaking in. So to actually prove this is a lot harder than Stahike is saying here, specifically if it is not known what extinct language to look for. Siemens basically states his experience. He is not offering this comment in ANY WAY as a refutation that he can prove SIT doesn't produce an extinct language. This is interesting, both for terminology and this argument. MOSTLY, NONE of the linguists quoted here stating their OPINION on the matter have done ANY WORK AT ALL ON THIS. This is where my "shoddy research" comments come in. Read the Newberg paper for what constitutes "reliable research". The extent of the work I see is opinion - "I can't recognize this, and I'm a linguist, so it must not be a language". That doesn't cut it. Samarin is the one exception here. In the article we are referencing, on p. 56 on he writes up SOME of the detail of what this means. He took glossa samples and mapped them to a consonant map. The words "phonemic strata", and "phonomes" - what do these mean? This is speaking of a breakdown of sounds. Samarin gives insight into this. The "sound breakdown" of analyzing a glossa basically involves mapping a breakdown of sounds into their component parts - consonants and vowels. The work Samarin records in his paper on this is that the English language contains 16 consonant sounds. I'm not sure of how they classify this, as the English language has 5 vowels and 20 consonants. Which, by the way, is exactly the same number and letters and consonants that the Latin language has. So Samarin maps the consonant sounds he hears in a glossa sample, and reaches the results that the sample covered 12 of the 16 major consonants in English. He notes that is a higher number of sounds he's hearing that would correspond with English than would correspond to another language. He then draws the conclusion that the samples more match the consonant patterns for English than other known languages. The sentence right after that, he notes that this consonant map would not only apply to English, but "about 5 other languages". Having read about language relationships, it's easy to point out that English consonants share the same sound and letters as the root language Latin does. Also, all of the Romance languages - Latin, or Neo-Latin derived (Spanish, Portugese, French, Italian) ALL share the same consonant maps. I'm going to drill into this a little more because Raf seems to think this is some huge revelation of why linguists don't look harder to identify languages. He wants to draw the conclusion that it's because they aren't languages, rather than the explanation that proving a negative is hard, and the linguists really don't have the time or effort to put into proving this absolutely, so they remain satisfied with just stating their educated opinion on the topic and writing about unproven conclusions. So back to the "phonemic strata" and the analysis of "phonomes". Let's drill into this a little more. Let's take a short phrase that everyone has heard ole VP speak on tape thousands of times - "lo shanta ka malakacita". How would we go about proving this is not a language? Break down the "phonomes" and look at a consonant map. We have the following consonants - "l, sh, nt, k, m, c, t". There are 7 consonant patterns there. We compare those against English and see they have the same pattern. Then we have a choice. We can notice that those consonant patterns ALSO would apply to Spanish, French, Portugese, Italian, or any of their language ancestor roots and dialects that they descended from (I'll submit to you that 16th century English would largely not be understood to this audience). So now all of a sudden I can't "prove" that Nida making the big fat claim that the glossa is English "phonomes" only. Because it equally could be Spanish, French, Portugese, or Italian by the methods you are using to investigate. (I'm not saying the glossa IS these languages, I would think if someone produced a glossa in perfect modern Italian that would be easily recognized. But say a predecessor to Italian, like 16th century Italian - or earlier. That may not be detected. You just CANNOT rule out those possibilities from a proof perspective). So this is the type of detail that I'm getting to when I drill into it. And the deeper I look the less I see these guys "conclusions" and "opinions" as matching the facts coming out of the work they are doing. But here's a challenge for linguists. Take that phrase above and prove it isn't a language. We have a PFAL tape where you can see VP speaking it. SIT "IS" non communicative from a human to human perspective. God already says the other won't understand unless it's interpreted. What does this add? NOTHING!!! Or the "constituent sub-codes" (love the geek speak) of ALL THE OTHER ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND THEIR ANCESTOR LANGUAGES. He's just not stating that. But Samarin did. Besides the same argument which also applies here to the other Romance languages, there's another rub to this. God never claims he is re-engineering a person's vocal chords to energize SIT. So the person is still doing the speaking. It's a known fact that foreign language speakers have trouble pronouncing some "phonomes". Like native Chinese speakers can't form "l"s and "r"s correctly. In fact, you can hear fluent English speakers with this problem, due to their native language background. There is no way that you can rule out a person is SIT in a real language with a bad foreign accent and issues pronouncing some of the "phonomes" they are not familiar with making the sounds for. Interesting but non-conclusive. See above. So let me see SIT people speak with an accent and repeat short phrases over and over. Oh, yes, this ABSOLUTELY PROVES THEY ARE NOT SPEAKING A REAL LANGUAGE. It couldn't be that they are apeaking a foreign language with an accent, and the message God is energizing are short repetitive phrases of praise in that language. He has an opinion there. And he's done some work. But that sentence is about as far from being proven as you can get. And that's from the evidence he presented in the same paper of the work he did on the topic. That's the paper where he talks about consonant maps. You know, papers like this Holton guy wrote are tedious to deal with. All they are is an amalgamation of opinion statements with no detail behind them. You know, even if it was the most popular opinion of linguists that modern SIT doesn't produce a language, is that still enough to discard scripture's teaching and accept them? Here's another field - creationism vs. evolution. Largely the vast majority of history experts (with PhD's, titles, books, etc.) all support the evolution theory and reject the creationist theory. They present evidence, like Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" where he got funding for a ship and a science experiment, sailed around the world, and noted that animals on the Galapagos Island chain exhibited characteristics of adaptation to their environment. So that's a great reason I should reject Creationism and the story in Genesis, and just accept their vastly superior intellect to mine and say I was lying about Creation and now I'm admitting that man got here evolving from an ape? Or should I retain my mental facilities and ask Darwin further questions surrounding adaptation between species and families?

I don't have a confidence in the field of linguistics beyond my confidence in God and scripture. As it is produced by man, I am free to examine the result, the studies, the methods used, read the papers, and evaluate them. I don't trust them or mistrust them prejudicially. I am looking at their fruit - what they produce - their written studies. I agree neither case is proved. I highlighted my issues with stating "it most certainly can be" above. This is reasonable mostly. Where I diverge from your conclusion is the "leans in one direction" quote. I'm certain this is not a scientific phrase that carries scientific meaning. I don't think the leaning phrase belongs in together with "testable evidence" at all. Yes our anecdotes aren't testable currently. I don't know if we'll ever run across one of these accounts where you could actually track down the people involved, but it's possible. Then it would be more documented, but probably still not testable. Now if what you are trying to say here is that the research papers we have read largely "lean in one direction" with the opinion they state and the conclusions they draw, I would agree with that statement. But the lack of solid evidence presented to me shows the "leaning" to be "bias" as opposed to "scientific results". Yes, and every single one of the linguists stop short of saying "I couldn't understand it therefore no human ever could have understood it". Because they know that statement is demonstrably false and easily challenged. I don't think the main alphas in the field of linguistics are trying to say they can comprehensively do this. I saw Samarin do some basic examples of this, but all he used were consonant maps, then compared an English consonant map (speakers native tongue) with the glossa they produced. He found that the glossa covered 12 of 16 English consonants, then noted that the majority of those also would represent the Romance Languages. Where a I doing this? Was it in Landry's paper he referred to Samarin's experiments and the two known gibberish examples? Instead of the ad hominem attack there, wouldn't it be better to note that he had 4 of Samarin's books in his Bibliography, so until you've checked those footnotes and resources, it's not a bad assumption to think that since he has read them and we have not that he might be accurate in his quote? Even if it was a Jr. High term paper, all we are relying on there is whether or not the quote and paraphrased section describing Samarin's work accurately reflect Samarin's work.

I thought Poythress wrote up that the linguists involved in whatever he was writing up were able to identify two samples of known gibberish inserted in to whatever experiment was that was going on that he didn't provide the details or writeup on. But yes, an elaborate fakery would be hard to prove as false, and UNLESS LINGUISTS DEVELOP THIS ABILITY SOMEHOW with language identification, no it can't be proven glossolalia samples are not language. I don't know how much there is going on in the field of linguistics on this front, but with the compute power we have available there may be some advances available. Yes, your example of muhs could very well be a word for Christ in a language that no one has heard since Genesis Tower of Babel times. That is implicit in how the Bible defines speaking in tongues. I'm not like trying to "rob you of an ability to say anything other than what you think". I'm just studying a topic defined in the Bible, according to the fields of science that mankind has related to that topic. I didn't pick the topic, I didn't pick the field of science that applies to it. And I think that if you go back and read my posts more carefully, I am NOT demanding proof of this. What I am demanding is people not lie and be hypocritical by saying something is "proven" over and over again when it clearly is NOT PROVEN. And that includes the people writing studies on it. Whether you are being nice or not with the "demand for proof" - trying to steer clear of the "how dare you" terminology that adds nothing to the content of the message - does not change the fact that yes, proving the positive side of this argument that SIT does produce a language could be done by taking a group of known samples of glossolalia where you have write-ups on test subjects to include a short bio and background of language exposure, then submitting the samples out to the world to see if just one of them could be identified. With one positive verifiable result, the positive side of this is proven. So does this mean it's fair to shift the burden of proof over to say "make that happen or I've proven tongues is not a language"? No that is not fair. I submit that if you agree in your theology or beliefs that God cannot lie, then the rule that God made up for what SIT is includes the fact that when one man speaks, the other listeners don't understand unless it is interpreted. Read I Cor. 14:2 again: I Cor. 14:2 "For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries." Here as part of how speaking in tongues defines itself in the Bible, we see God saying that when you SIT, no man understands. We also see as part of the definition that you are speaking to God. This is where the prayer life interpretation angle comes in. Also, as part of that you are "speaking mysteries", whatever your interpretation of that entails. So I submit if you have your perfect test case, where one person speaks in a tongue and one other or many others in the room understand, then that perfect test case contradicts what I Cor. 14:2 says about tongues. How do we get around the fact that people DEFINITELY understood on Pentecost, and that contradicts I Cor. 14:2?? The explanation we have is that for miracles, God can go over and above His normal laws. All normal occurrences of SIT would be subject to the laws. How do we also explain the anecdotes of socks and don here, and other similar stories? To note that the anecdote COULD be a miracle like Pentecost was, or that people were mistaken or the lying and faking accusation too.

My point is their insistence on it not being a language, or their "conclusions" they wrote up are no different than my speculation without some form of proof that takes the form of evidence presented to the reader. I'm not buying your mental milk exercise example with no write-up as sufficient. That's obvious, and I'm not going to argue that any more. I'm proposing that they can't identify language from phenomic makeup beyond the languages which they are fluent in or have significant exposure to. I'm also proposing that for extinct languages, there are NO linguists that can do this as they don't have a catalog of known phenomic samples of the actual language being spoken in any form. And I submit that it absolutely IS an issue in the research we've been reviewing.

If you've got them do it. This would be a more consistent sample than any I've read about in papers to date. And if you cut 3-4 min of audio from each tape to individual .wav files or .mp4 files, you could put a folder up on Dropbox that has all those files and a one page Word doc writing up the background of them, teaching position on how they teach TIP, and general description of the subjects (wouldn't have language backgrounds of speakers, but still would be better than what I've seen out there). Also, cutting 3-4 min out of an hour tape is well below the "acceptable use" threshold for copyright purposes. That's a baseline that could be used to communicate with many linguists, theologians, etc. And it's not EXACTLY what we commonly saw in TWI, but it's PRETTY CLOSE INDEED. Close enough I say that it would interest those on this site. You can't rule out fakery, and anyone needing an example of Chris Geer's self-aggrandizing self-martyring ego filled diatribe, just read "Passing of a Patriarch" up in the GS archives. As a side note, I have heard stories about Geer that he used to go around running classes and bragging that "every single one of the people in his classes all manifested". So you also have the bully and intimidation factor there same as in TWI. And the legalism. All that doesn't change the quality of those Gartmore teaching tape samples. I'm sure you're on their "round tuit" list. If you had a clean sample out on Dropbox to share with them, potentially doing a good deal of the legwork involved in them investigating this, it may move you up that list dramatically. As a matter of fact, I would be willing to bet that one of the biggest obstacles to those guys doing better research was the '70s. We have so much more available today to study this with technology and the internet.

I didn't see any of them state explicitly why they didn't do this. However, I did draw a conclusion about this. I surmised that if they were able to recognize the language then they DEFINITELY would have written about this. So they did not recognize the sample. I also explained this in a previous post that I've never seen linguists claim to be able to take a sample of ANY known language and validate that it is a genuine sample in that language by phonemic pattern matching. I don't think they can do this, and don't think they claim to be able to do this.

You are dishonestly trying to force feed us accepting that researchers DID this when they didn't write about any aspect of it, even at the level of your milk example. It's not my "first instinct" noticing it. It wasn't my second. It was after reading through their research and doing so over and over and wondering where the support for their conclusions was drawn. It certainly wasn't from any evidence that they communicated to the reader, like any normal research paper writeup would be. Basically what I see is they skipped that part. Except for Newberg, who did the work and wrote it all up. And LOL at BOTH you AND WordWolf trying to get me to believe that any professor would give you a grade other than "F" for work that is not written down.

Oh, don't sell yourself short. You show ALL the research skills of a first grader on this thread.

Sorry just had to get a quick capture of Raf's idea of the scientific method before it gets edited.

Yes, other readers of the thread. I feel the same way. If Raf has something that deserves a response, please quote it for me. I've wasted far too much time already on this argument, and I have no common ground any more with Raf on the logical aspects of this topic...

It matches well with your practice of ASSUMING the context is there for every single time you repeat opinion as fact. Just repeat that line over and over again. OH, NOW YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT the context of Samarin's opinion. All the other times you quoted it, the context was NOWHERE NEAR, and just ASSUMED TO BE TRUE. I am just pointing out that without the context of what you are talking about, it is a completely ignorant statement because you can't rule out it's talking about Acts, or any genuine SIT account. Just wanted to point out that when Raf paraphrases, it's not really an accurate representation of the study. You have to understand, it has to go through Raf's filter of "how strongly does this prove all SIT is faking it", had selection applied, and also do a little spin control of the way we are phrasing sentences too. Now that Raf has another Samarin book that nobody else does, we're going to hear veiled references to this book along with Raf's insults. But never just direct quotes that you can read for yourself and form your own opinion. No, the Anti-Tongues Justice League (ATJL) HAS to paraphrase, dear reader. Because they think they are smarter than you. Meaning, I've read every one of chockfull's latest posts, and really don't like the fact that he isn't letting my insults slide any more but is responding in kind. But I'm going to pretend I'm above the matter, and not the one making continual snide insulting comments. LMAO!!!!! This guy gets funnier every post! So we have a new way of proving things, called "classification". It "employs the scientific method" along with "all science". Hypothesis testing apparently is an element of classification present "in every step of that process". It's just that we don't actually DO the formulation, or any of the actual steps that are involved in hypothesis testing. And we certainly wouldn't write about all that work - like the Newburg study. No, we just write our opinion and not any of the actual research!! Hilarious!!!! It's an implicit thing!!!! Hahahahahahaha!!!!!! And here is where it is SIMPLE to see the difference between how a RESEARCHER thinks, and how RAF thinks. To Raf, the scientific method is like sniffing a carton of milk. Nothing recorded, one act, one "impression". But somehow it's still the scientific method. Hahahahahaha!!!!!! To a RESEARCHER, the important part is RECORDING THE DATA. I mean, like actually DOING the hypothesis test. Why is this? Because if it's done correctly, then further studies can be done expanding upon it. Not just the 1000th idiot in a long line sniffing a carton. No, you left me with the impression that you are completely clueless when it comes to just about any aspect of the scientific method, and that if I want to find out a true definition of these terms, I should start with an internet search. That way I know I won't be led in the opposite direction of truth. I want people to stop being liars. A liar is a hypocrite. A hypocrite says "this is proven", but has zero evidence of methodology that is REQUIRED in every field of science to use the term "proven". So no, I don't require a positive result on an alternative hypothesis (Raf can't even get the terminology right when trying to state my viewpoint) to show the difference between a faker and a genuine SIT speaker. I just want people to not be liars and to not use lying terms and phrases.

Then let the sentence be modified so that it stands on its own and does not confuse what YOU mean by glossa with what the charismatic world means by glossa. Otherwise it's just a guilt by association term that is NOT DISTINCT from Biblical glossa or the general charismatic discussion of glossa. The assumed definition of terms on this thread is enough to gag me with a pitchfork.

Actually, any study related to SIT would be on topic for this thread. SIT is the first word in the thread topic. Actually, now that I'm looking at that, how weird of a thread title is this anyway? SIT, TIP, Prophecy, and Confession? All right, we're talking about the inspiration manifestations and "confession"???? Like "Bless me father, for I have sinned, I called a man a dumb-@$$"??????? I mean, is this thread the place for "confessions"??? Like the lying and faking confessions??? I mean, no offense, but can't people just confess their sins to God in the privacy of their closet or something? I mean the thread audience is not their mediator or anything. And nobody is a Catholic priest on here. So if we could just leave out all the sin and guilt of people with their past lying and faking, and the need for them to have others to share in that guilt with them, then we could have a lot of discussion going on about many things related to SIT, and interpretation and prophecy.

Sure. Just go with the word size and communication strategy that is inverse to the size of your ego, and you should have a good guideline there. And you are not Zoltar, Master of the Universe such that I need your permission for raising questions of this sort. Samarin never claimed that I could read anywhere that he was able to detect samples of a language he didn't speak and identify them. In fact, I've never really read ANY linguist claim that they could do this as part of their expertise. This is fact. Not speculation. The speculation is yours, where you think that you can automatically assume that because Samarin had some pretty boldly stated opinion on the subject, that you find that he claimed the ability to take a sample of a foreign language and detect it and identify it even if he did not speak the language. He did not. The easy way to verify that would be to mix in half and half glossa samples with samples of one person speaking a praise type speech in a foreign language. But that really isn't necessary, because linguists aren't claiming about themselves what you are claiming about them. Why a semi-intelligent human being would say something that stupid? In Acts 2 on Pentecost, SIT is referred to in the Bible as glossa and lalia, and the historic record in Acts was that everyone understood them speaking in their own native languages. So that clearly is an example that immediately contradicts this inane statement. Actually, let me rephrase my question. Why would a semi-intelligent human being not only say something that stupid, but present it like it is an argument that is proven fact? Do they expect the thread audience all to have IQ's under 60 at this point?

You're losing me. Samaring DID recognize the languages somewhere? I was just pointing out that the fact that Samarin didn't recognize the languages did not mean that he was ruling out the possibility of it being an existing human language in use or extinct language. Did he state somewhere that he was ruling out the possibility of ALL languages that I missed? Because that is one that I CERTAINLY would like to see the evidence on. I'm out too, off to scare small children. See you guys tomorrow....