chockfull

Next Moore gets into what I call "Jehova's Witness" territory. He claims that if you are doing something yourself that God didn't recommend, you could be possessed. This is great logic for introducing fear around the subject into the reader, and moves pretty far away from any scientific analysis. Suffice it to say any person can refute this and probably does daily. For example, I do things probably on a daily basis God doesn't recommend (probably and hypothetically). There's a lot more things God says I should do that I don't. This is called "being human". This is not going to get me possessed by the spirit of Dr. Pepper. (or whatever). Come on, Moore. Can we move beyond the tribal superstition "booga booga" mindset here? The section after this one is Are the tongues of 1 Corinthians different than the tongues in Acts? For this section it brings up theological arguments I have never heard before, and thus I learned a lot. Many sociologists and theologians bring up differences between Cor. and Acts in what they were doing. Honestly never thought of that before, but it's important to consider if there is a lot of mainstream Christian attention on it.

Next, we come up to geisha's favorite section: Here Moore IMO misses the forest for the trees. While it is stated that SIT builds up one's self, that is miles away from defining the purpose of SIT as for personal enjoyment or benefit. While true, that is secondary. One gets the picture of a muscle-bound egotist at a Gold's Gym SIT for hours and looking at themselves in the mirror. Thus the focus is taken off the smaller tidbits of truth contained in the letter, and on to the discussion of building up others. The main purpose of SIT is not for building up the body, it is for one's private prayer life. As an example of this, as a child myself and friends would like to make up things speaking in Pig Latin. We would play and hold a private conversation which we held to be special and just between us. Because we were speaking in Pig Latin, only we could understand. It made us feel closer and that outsiders couldn't eavesdrop. SIT in my private prayer life feels like speaking to my friends in Pig Latin. I wasn't doing it to become a Pig Latin linguist and United Nations translator, or to make myself big and Pig strong, I was doing it because we could and it was cool. No big deal, kids will be kids. Now reading through this example again, it provides a lot of ammo for the "faker" side in saying "yeah, and that's why you made up SIT as an adult". Hopefully the reader can sort through the tangibles in the example without resorting to that logical leap. With Moore's handling of I Cor. 14:4 the problem is this: here the context is talking about what they do in the temple, in church meetings, or at each others house when interacting with others in the body. It is not discouraging SIT in private prayer life, it is contrasting the private prayer life benefit which was being over-emphasized in Corinth with how they should be more mindful of one another, and look to edify others "in the church". Some people really like to latch on to the latter, and use it to disprove the former. However, the only way you can really do that is to say that the context and tone of Corinthians is the ONLY thing important, and the individual verses can possibly be untrue and stated just in the context of reproof. While that may be OK to do something like that when you are evaluating personal interaction, like an argument between two people, we are discussing scripture here. If it has no more weight than a mere statement in anger someone had while reproving Corinthians, then really there is no authority of scripture that can be held to, as it could be an incorrect statement made by a human at any given point, and not divinely inspired.

Moving on. He goes on to define SIT a little more narrowly: Since he is in the theological section here, I'll say that this is accurate in its limited scope but does not represent the entirety of SIT. Next he covers "Is glossolalia real human language?" and delves into a topic that Raf supports strongly - where he makes the case for I Cor. 13:1 tongues of angels being a hyperbolic statement. He does a good job making a case for that tying in all the other hyperbolic statements Paul makes and pointing out he didn't move mountains, etc. So his aim there is to narrow down SIT to human language only for purpose of examination and proof. Next he digs into Romans 8:24: This verse is problematic in proofs as it is very closely tied to the doctrine of the Trinity. Is the Spirit here the third person of the Godhead, or is it talking about the gift itself? Depending on your views on the Trinity, this could make or break someone's view towards SIT - if it's the 3rd person of the Godhead, then SIT is unnecessary, and the Spirit does the work. If it's the gift, then that's a supporting verse for SIT being valuable in someone's private prayer life. Obviously the author is a Trinitarian and thus his interpretation here follows.

Second here on encouragement for writing a book. You are a prolific and inspiring author, even on simple thread posts. I would buy a copy.

This so transparently exposes TWI as a leech of an organization. First, they don't want to reach people in genuine need or with obvious needs - that would actually require doing some work, getting the hands dirty, helping people who are down and out improve and put their lives back together. You know - real beneficial work that legitimate non-profit corporations are doing all the time. Second, they are after the devout. Why? No problems, steady work, more money. Where does the money go? To help the devout? No. It goes back to HQ's little fiefdom structure. And they keep a tight lid on the money. 75/25 was the budget breakdown I was familiar with. When the ABS in a state went below what would support having a Limb coord. be salaried, they have always asked them to work secularly, and keep the same workload. Third, they have zero infrastructure in communities. People meet in homes, usually in violation of local housing ordinances. There was even specific language that would be communicated from the Trunk office to use when neighbors complained about parking or gathering problems. We would always be encouraged to use free rooms for community meetings - in Branches - like libraries, community centers, fire stations, etc. So that we wouldn't have to pay to have larger meetings. Then after that care was taken to keep costs down on Limb level meetings, and approval would be denied for anything nice. If you look at this from a perspective of the real underlying reason is TWI wants to leech off society, collect money for doing as little as possible, and preserve their little fiefdoms.

I'm working through this source now. I thought I'd comment here rather than clutter up the SIT Reading Room thread with discussion when that might be a good place to collect references. Mark Moore - What We Can Know About SIT I. What We Can Know About Speaking in Tongues Historically Some good stuff here. Great references, from church history and modern history. I learned something here. II. What We Can Know About Tongues Theologically Here he starts to get into trouble. His focus on supernatural language and his #2 assumption are both inaccurate and unsupported scripturally. IMO he is constructing a straw man here. In the definition it is not necessarily a "supernatural language". Tongues define themselves as "the tongues of men or angels" in Corinthians. This means that they are either a language used by men on Earth at some time, or a language spoken by angels. The alternative proposed interpretation is that "of angels" is a figure of speech (like hyperbole or in that family of figures) to exaggerate or over-emphasize the power and magnitude of what tongues represent. If it is figurative, what would "of angels" be meant to communicate? Since angels are spirit beings the first and most obvious point would be that it would be a language to communicate with spirit beings as opposed to humans. The second would be that it represents spiritual power as different from power in the physical realm.

You would like to go back and do wut?

Consider for a moment providing reference material? I'm going to read this and re-read our other sources again.

My experience with 12 steps is completely related to interacting with Christians in my fellowships over the years that were alcoholics. Overall, they are much needed and very helpful. I did notice a difference in what you might call "degree of alcoholism". I mean there were some people that I saw drank a lot due to psychological trauma. (Maybe there's a lot on this forum that have been in that category). Those types of people tended to get better as they healed. Then there was the real disease - those people would never get better and need to never touch alcohol again in their lives as one beer or glass of wine would start an out of control spiral ending up in disaster. The category of people with the real disease were the ones I thought needed to stay in AA 12 steps ongoing throughout their lives. For the others, I saw they may have gotten some benefit out of the program for a time, but it wasn't beneficial to stay in a 12 step program ongoing throughout their lives. My experience or .02.

It is interesting to note. I have close friends in JW. They are absolutely conditioned to fear SIT. Not just as a matter of doctrine. They literally believe people SIT are possessed, and become visibly agitated when the topic comes up. On the gay side of things my views on that is that TWI had a whole lot of angst against that group of people, especially in LCM's era. IMO that was because he was cheating on his wife and his wife was leaving him for another woman, but hey. In Biblical times, the Greek culture had a lot of homosexuality in it. The middle-aged men would have relationships with young boys, and gay relationships were part of and acceptable in culture. That didn't change Paul's work or God's direction to bring them to Christ. And to complicate matters, Paul's letters in a short time had to handle all of that and provide direction for new Christians to live as believers and navigate within that part of culture and their past, which I'm sure couldn't be easy. So no surprise to me there. You are right. Landry was the one quoting Samarin. Not Polythress. Polythress had plenty of his own research sources not related to Samarin.

Yes, Raf. That terminology would put the scientific side of this discussion on par with and accurate with the scientific method and the statistics used as proofs in most of the softer sciences that are related to human studies. And it would probably get us past some of the "logical fallacy" bickering over whose responsibility it is to prove it. I don't know if it's possible to prove or not for reasons I've highlighted. But if it can be proven, that's the right path to approach it. We could kick around the hypothesis statement to try and ensure it covers all angles or is stated the most accurately.

It doesn't matter whether it's in the context of doing the after dinner dishes. The context doesn't magically 100% change the meaning of the verse around. Again, for about the 10th time on this point, it really doesn't matter whether or not Paul was mad at the Corinthians, if he was reproving them, if they were bad boys, etc. etc. etc. What Paul says about SIT is about the only detail we have in the Bible about it. If you go jumping all over hyperbole as a figure of speech saying it means you really shouldn't speak in tongues when the verse says "I would that you all do it", if you interpret where he talks about praying with the spirit and understanding as not applying to the private prayer life because he's talking about praying in church, and if you do all sorts of other antics with Corinthians to support what you've already decided is your position about it, then there really is nothing to discuss here doctrinally either. Believe what you want. It is absolutely no logical way to approach scriptures, though. No, the access to God was given to us by Jesus sacrifice making the new birth possible. Gifts / manifestations come along with the new birth. I didn't know questioning SIT would bring you to doubting the whole underpinnings of the new birth. That certainly was not God's intent. No we are not. I am extemporaneously stringing together concepts directly from verses related to SIT. The verses appear in different parts of your Bible, so it's like an extract from a subject scriptural study on it. Can I gently remind you that you sound very similar to Bildad the Shuhite here? No duh. Of course this is the case. And part of what God accomplished through Jesus amazing sacrifice was this beautiful gift related to the new birth. You should check it out some time, rather than arguing with God about what its intent is.

Yeah, and Polythress quotes his exact same study while emphasizing the point I was making, that Samarin's own linguists in the study saw elements of language. He may have been citing that study to point out Samarin's forceful conclusions weren't exactly supported by his own evidence.

I'm just saying the other accounts do NOT say others understood the tongues. And there is a place in the Bible saying that generally those speaking in tongues are not understood by others. Sorry if that "misdirects" you. So since Paul uses the figure of speech hyperbole frequently, then you just can't trust the man not to exaggerate? Even if that phrase were hyperbole, I would read it that he is confronting the problem that some people SIT and others didn't and that they probably were going around making internet threads arguing over it. Or whatever they did during that century of the sort. So he wished everyone would just do it so it wouldn't be an issue. Acts 10:45-46 And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. 46 For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God So you are saying here that this states that the Gentiles were SIT in what language? One that they of the circumcision understood, but the Gentiles did not? What language pray tell would this be? Aramaiac was spoken by all in the region. Greek was the Gentiles primary language - Paul may have been preaching in Greek. I don't know about that. If it was important they understood without interpretation, I think that would have been stated. I mean you can carry the first usage way too far here. Not every time someone SIT does it need to be Pentecost. Why are you reading in me being bothered in this? I'm not. I can easily understand Paul was reproving and correcting the Corinthians, yet still was speaking truthfully and accurately. Why is it so hard for you to see that the man was speaking accurately inspired by God even when he was reproving them, so you can rely on his literal words, not some figure of speech meaning really he didn't want them all to SIT? I can see you have your UPSET filter on here. Helping those who help themselves is so far from what I was saying there it's not funny. Yes you are very misguided. The gift opens up further access to God, to communicate spiritually, to pray "in the spirit" and "with my understanding". To enhance the relationship further. To help us communicate with God better. It's not a Harry Potter wand. IMO.

I know you are but what am I All right let's break out the quotes again I suppose. Has to be better than this dance. And Polythress quotes Samarin's studies and shows, like I said, elements in the recorded samples of genuine language. They used words, sentences, phrases, natural language breaks, etc. When two samples of gibberish were introduced, all linguists were able to easily identify them as different from the other samples. This is a straight paraphrase from the study - I can dig out the exact page and quotes. The problem with your Cliff notes is you are reading into the studies. Polythress and Samarin don't really describe this as human, non spiritual activity. They just designed an experiment. In their testing groups, all performed "free vocalization". Some had religious inspiration, others not. So even the studies on "free vocalization" are non-conclusive, admitted by both authors. We are not even getting started on the topic of whether or not "free vocalization" and genuine SIT are the same thing.

This discussion and debate wavers between polite and not so polite as people are expressing their views and defending their points. I include myself as being polite and not polite in my posts. That's to my credit in places and I'm to be blamed in others. Look, we all came from a cult. We all have issues. Not as many issues as those still under the authority of the cult, but still issues. All I can do is apologize where I'm wrong, forgive others as quickly as possible, and keep moving on.

I don't have a lot invested into this "logical fallacy" idea. I think waysider was the one that brought that up. I think the whole idea of "logical fallacy" is basically to try and work towards the scientific method where you have a hypothesis, then scientific methods to prove or disprove that hypothesis. By nature there has to be a hypothesis to test. In this case the hypothesis could equally be "All people claiming to SIT are faking it", or "SIT is a genuine language from God" (at least in the most general sense of defining the hypothesis). I think more our debate has just been discussing the topic. I don't really think either side introduced the idea as you state from a general presence perspective. You were sharing a perspective and took a poll. The poll is about exactly divided, which fuels into the debate. I think all the logical fallacy stuff is extraneous static and is just an intellectual way to call someone a name.

I don't mean for it to be an unpleasant conversation. But I'm unwilling to take 100% of the blame for that. With human nature there IS a natural course where things develop - that's not psychoanalyzing you. You are the one that is making a big deal out of making admissions of faking it on this thread, and how liberating that is. You were the one using "faking" and "lying" as terms earlier. You were the one attacking my private prayer life earlier. So take the responsibility for your actions. If things are unpleasant, maybe your actions have something to do with it too. We went down this road earlier. I posted excerpts from the study backing up the points I was making where linguists noted elements of language in the samples, including words, sentences, phrases, etc. I posted the quote saying they could NOT rule out them being languages. This is 100% the opposite of what you stated that they could be proven as not languages. You are misrepresenting the study not me, by completely misrepresenting the conclusions arrived at from the study. The conclusions, one more time, were basically that it could NOT be proven one way or the other.

"Proving" from a scientific basis became problematic for the ones involved. In calling something genuine scientifically they place a lot more hoops to jump through to reach that barrier. For instance, like someone SIT can have NEVER had ANY exposure to the language. There were a couple of incidents discounted because the tongue speaker had very limited exposure to the language before, so scientists said they couldn't rule it out from the subconscious. So "cannot" prove it is too strong a term. If you have a cooperating scientist, tools to measure, people in a believers meeting, and also you have God's permission and support such that there is a guarantee that the power coming in will be there when you do the test even though you can't measure it. If you have all those things, then you can prove it.

This is also intellectually dishonest. The first reference posted on this thread of Polythress showed a sample space of recorded tongues, and a study by a group of linguists. No linguist understood the language, but all agreed that the tongues had elements of language as opposed to several recordings of known gibberish inserted into the sample group, which were easily detected as gibberish. There also I am giving a lot of leeway calling those recorded samples "tongues". I don't know for a fact that they were genuine tongues. So you are misrepresenting the very studies you introduced, cherry picking parts of them that support your core belief. This again is intellectual dishonesty. I understand what drives people to this. It's frustrating when you can't measure spirit, you faked it in TWI, and you really want to prove others did too so that your core self image survives intact.

So let me see, pointing out where you are stating your opinion as fact is "it gets ugly". Wow, there's a lot of emotion attached to someone pointing out the rules you are supposed to be playing by. That's all it takes for you to use words like "laughable", "ugly", "hypocritical". How can you possibly participate in a conversation supposed to be governed by rules? Maybe taking some time off of it IS a good idea. I can see a little more of your challenge now. You get emotionally whipped up very easily, then shut down critical logic. It is great to have critical thinking skills. It is great to question. But having a controversial opinion, then forcing it down others throats by stating this opinion as fact is none of these. It is simply obnoxious. I am confronting that. You and Raf are doing this on this thread, and obviously both of you really, really, really don't like being called on it. Yes there is continuity in Acts. So look at where you see tongues in Acts. Acts 2 - Pentecost, Acts 10:46; Acts 19:6. Acts 10 is the initial outpouring to the Gentiles. There is no indication in that account that it was for the purpose of language translation. Acts 19 - same thing. So of the 3 recorded instances in Acts that surround tongues, only the first one at Pentecost has anything to do with the purpose being others understanding in their own language, or a sign to unbelievers. As a matter of fact, specifically in Acts 10 the marveling is recorded by the believers who saw it happen. All right then. In Acts 10 and Acts 19, please point out the verses showing those hearing understood the language. Or is it really you have to read into those accounts to interpret it as you say? You label things a lot. It gets in the way of logic. There are scriptures that some consider a leap that it refers to tongues. However, I Cor. 14:15 states "I pray with my spirit I pray with my understanding". These are separate and distinct. One involves spirit (that cannot be detected by the senses). One involves normal prayer / speech / talking. But the fact that you looked at scripture to formulate an opinion is much better than labeling and reading commentary. Could it possibly be that the same word is used to convey to the believer that the same principles of language apply? No, that never could be it. So on the day of Pentecost there was also a special miracle, where everyone understood. And I've heard a dozen or so firsthand accounts of tongues in a believers meeting being understood without interpretation, including one by socks on this thread. Those also would be a miracle. Those also would be hard to ignore. But hey, the "fakers" Claim X group on here are doing a great job of ignoring it anyway. Hey all you have to do is ignore firsthand accounts, ignore Acts 10 and 19, and blow up Acts 2 to the sky and you have your position in a nutshell. Or you could look at his words as accurate while he is correcting the Corinthians, rather than thinking "oh he was just mad or exaggerating" when he said he would they all spoke in tongues. No, these little nuances of tone in whether or not he was reproving him are the only important thing. They needed scolding, and he was going to say whatever was necessary to scold them even if it wasn't accurate. How ludicrous. oh yeah. have to axe Acts 10 because it doesn't line up with your interpretation. there are a number of reasons why they would have known they were exalting God, not the least which would have been that maybe many in the audience were present on the day of Pentecost. Luke doesn't say they understood the language. If you combine Acts 10 and Acts 19 with the most basic instruction from I Cor. 14, you know that Paul says if a person speaks in tongues, the other doesn't understand. So from other places in the Bible, where it defines its own terms it's really clear that they didn't understand, if you don't read into it. Oh wait. Paul was scolding the Corinthians, so we can't trust that what he was saying there was accurate, only that he was mad and they were wrong. It couldn't be that Pentecost was the one-time cataclysmic event for all ages introducing the new birth or anything and that's why there were special miracles attached to the event. Your perspective on Corinthians may allow for tone, but you dismiss the content as non-important from a factual perspective. For what purpose? Well, look at God's gift of life in general. Who does it benefit first? Yourself. Then others next. It's the same with the gift of eternal life. Eternal life benefits you first, then by you not dying others you may touch. It is not a stretch to think that the new birth will have those same benefits - you first - providing a connection with the Father, then others next. It's a basic tenet of helping others that you have to help yourself first. Airline instructions tell you to put the oxygen mask over yourself first, then help the one next to you next. If all you do is focus on others, you will not be able to provide long-term benefit for them, as each person counts for one. If your needs are unmet, then that will spill over into helping others and you will be ineffective, as the negativity from your needs not being met will project through and sabotage your efforts to help. No, God provided a perfect gift, one that would allow connection and communication with Him, eternal life, and spiritual power. A gift where you can be sustained through quenching yourself in the eternal fountain whose water never fails, and then you can share that with others helping them to get there too. The gift is not so that you can become a misguided martyr. IMO.

Raf, I'm even involved in debate on this thread because you initiated the claim. I didn't come on here to debate my private prayer life until it was attacked. So for you to deny that you initiated the claim now, and that somehow nebulously someone else did for the sole purpose of putting yourself on the "correct" side of logical fallacy is intellectually dishonest.

Someone did. They provided an account where someone SIT, and others in the audience understood the content and the language. That's proof that the person didn't know the language, and that the people hearing it understood it as a real language. This was a firsthand eyewitness account. It would be acceptable in a court of law. So unless you can reasonably convince everyone that the person is lying about it, or some other explanation, then it's done. You still don't want to believe it.

This is more what I would label the "Hail Mary" fallacy. It's where someone takes the view "who cares" what evidence, scriptures, or points of logic occurred, I'll take my opinion, put a couple of numbers around it, then throw it up as a "hail Mary" pass and ask if we can agree on this much. waysider, who knows, maybe you'll get some replacement refs that will score that for you, and you can win the game.... 1. It can't be shown that SIT is not a "language". There are some clips of people speaking gibberish that display no elements of a language. But no overall conclusions. 2. It was observed that many speakers in a study showed natural elements of language when doing "their thing". But since nobody in the scientific studies understood the language, it wasn't proven. Interestingly enough, we have at least one first party account of a meeting where a member on this thread heard SIT, and people in the room understood it in their native language. Thus in that sense we have "proof". Firsthand testimony is allowed in a court of law as proof. But nobody could question all those people to verify, so it's not definitive.

I just love it when people present their opinions and interpretation of scripture as absolute fact. In spite of insurmountable evidence of people SIT in the Bible where the hearers did NOT understand the language spoken. I think that maybe what you ought to do is actually study what the Bible does say about it, in detail. You seem to be missing a lot.