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Speaking in Tongues

The Atheist

The Grammar Tyrant
The Atheist
Joined
Jul 3, 2006
Messages
36,371
According to authoritive sources like The Exorcist, speaking in tongues can be recognised as such, because it can't be recognised as something else.

How do churches differentiate between "genuine" tongues and pretending to be tongues? You can't tell me that for every Tongue-speaker, the Vatican has the hundreds of interpreters required to confirm it isn't a current language.

Does a vocabulary exist for Tongue?

Should it be classed as a language? Or will the fact of it becoming a language force Tongue to change into a new one? Or is that just Greek? Is it just speaking in English and claiming it to be Tongue, because the language itself is like the Babel Fish? Christians are unable to tell me about Tongue, but insist it's not just plain gibberish.

All sounds like a load of copralalia to me...
 
I saw a documentary where they hooked up a person and then had them speak in tongues. IIRC, what they recorded was that a certain part of the brain deactivated, the part that had to do with sense of space-time or something.
 
The Atheist said:
How do churches differentiate between "genuine" tongues and pretending to be tongues? You can't tell me that for every Tongue-speaker, the Vatican has the hundreds of interpreters required to confirm it isn't a current language.
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Can they interpret it as anything coherent at all?

what's the difference between a "tongue" that cannot be understood and gibberish (other than being in the right place at the right time)?
 
Nihilus said:
Can they interpret it as anything coherent at all?

what's the difference between a "tongue" that cannot be understood and gibberish (other than being in the right place at the right time)?
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I was the member of charismatic bible study group for a few months in high school. I was told to "just let it flow." I felt like an idiot. They had all kinds of stories about people speaking in foreign intelligible languages. My experience, like with the rest of the christian voodoo, is that it is a load of crap.
 
skip to about 7:30 or so.

There are other videos, it all sounds like gibberish. I've been to services where people have spoken in tongues, and it didn't sounds like this guy.

Why don't they ever speak in Spanish or Canadian?
 
Nihilus said:
Can they interpret it as anything coherent at all?

what's the difference between a "tongue" that cannot be understood and gibberish (other than being in the right place at the right time)?
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None at all, as far as I can tell.

Dr H said:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=eb99cea50b73f00b819a4190ce812713
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Cheers. Do you know if there are other mechanisms which produce similar results? Has anyone ever bothered checking?

godofpie said:
My experience, like with the rest of the christian voodoo, is that it is a load of crap.
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Yes, that very thought crossed my mind many years ago. I see it's undergone a revival recently.

Fronzel said:
There are other videos, it all sounds like gibberish. I've been to services where people have spoken in tongues, and it didn't sounds like this guy.
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Isn't that the point? Wouldn't each individual Tongue have to be completely different from all the others?

Fronzel said:
Why don't they ever speak in Spanish or Canadian?
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Canadian's a perfect example! Spanish - not so much, far too regular.
 
What if the voices in my head are speaking in Tongues? Would I be able to comprehend what I am being told?
 
grayman said:
What if the voices in my head are speaking in Tongues? Would I be able to comprehend what I am being told?
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Yes.

If you are truly at one with the god with the capital "G", you will be able to understand them. The devout have no problem with this and the messages are often along the lines of, "Give more money to your church!"

If you have voices in your head that you cannot comprehend, then you're clearly possessed by Satan and should attend the nearest church at once.

If it isn't that, then you're just insane....







... or both.
 
Xians see tongues as a very prestigious gift from the holy spirit, and you can only receive it if you are a super duper holy, good xian. They take a lot of pride in the ability to speak in tongues, and those who do not are jealous of those who do. They should instead be happy that they are not so suggestible.
 
schlitt said:
Xians see tongues as a very prestigious gift from the holy spirit, and you can only receive it if you are a super duper holy, good xian. They take a lot of pride in the ability to speak in tongues, and those who do not are jealous of those who do. They should instead be happy that they are not so suggestible.
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But the Pope bloke only ever speaks in human languages. As the holiest bloke on the planet, shouldn't he be almost exclusively speaking in Tongue? Other devout people would understand him.

thaiboxerken said:
Because it is. Reference Ockham's Razor, but you already knew this. I just wanted to say it for the woo's in the room.
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Feel free!

Never mind Ockham shaving, I want a christian to tell me how it differs from a stage hypnotist getting one of his "subjects" to speak alien!
 
The Atheist said:
According to authoritive sources like The Exorcist, speaking in tongues can be recognised as such, because it can't be recognised as something else.

How do churches differentiate between "genuine" tongues and pretending to be tongues?
Click to expand...

Honestly, they don't have a rigourus system to differentiate [atleast in my experience]. Generally, if they see someone cryin', foamin', and babbling on the floor they assume its tongues and leave it at that.
 
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AkuManiMani said:
Honestly, they don't have a rigourus system to differentiate [atleast in my experience]. Generally, if they see someone cryin', foamin', and babbling on the floor they assume its tongues and leave it at that.
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No, unfortunately. For this, we must refer back to the fount of all [divine] truth, the Roman Catholic Church.

Tongues, as one of the charismata, must be identifiable. Doesn't say how, but I'm sure the RCC has an arbiter of Tongue somewhere. Maybe it's a nun!

tkingdoll said:
Karen Stollznow wrote an excellent article on it here: http://www.bad-language.com/tongues
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Cheers, excellent is right!
 
Nihilus said:
Can they interpret it as anything coherent at all?

what's the difference between a "tongue" that cannot be understood and gibberish (other than being in the right place at the right time)?
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Actually, it's not hard for a good linguist to distinguish between a genuine but not understood language and made-up gibberish. People can't make up stuff complex enough to be real language.

Suppose I said that the following is a sentence in my native language : bababbaba ba baba bababa bababba baabababba ba babba

Would you believe me? Of course not! No human language only has one consonant and one vowel. But carry that observation up to the syntactic level, and you see the problem with glosso-gibberish.
 
grayman said:
What if the voices in my head are speaking in Tongues? Would I be able to comprehend what I am being told?
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When I had my run-in with the scary church in Missouri, there was a man who went into convulsions on the floor and was screaming which apparently indicated that the spirit was upon him and he was speaking in tongues. After he was finished, members of the congregation stood up to proclaim what God told them the man's message had been. This was immediately before I and my friends went to leave and found the doors were blocked by body guards. I bumped one out of the way. He was so shocked that it actually worked.

I thought the point of speaking in tongues in the bible was so people could spread the word (in other legitimate languages) to those who didn't speak the native language of the believers and not just to speak rubbish?
 
drkitten said:
Actually, it's not hard for a good linguist to distinguish between a genuine but not understood language and made-up gibberish. People can't make up stuff complex enough to be real language.

Suppose I said that the following is a sentence in my native language : bababbaba ba baba bababa bababba baabababba ba babba

Would you believe me? Of course not! No human language only has one consonant and one vowel. But carry that observation up to the syntactic level, and you see the problem with glosso-gibberish.
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Nope, you're making up descriptions to suit your case, your premise only applies if gibberish means, "repeated sound, only differing in tone and length", which unfortunately, is not what it means.

Gibberish is simply that, unintelligible garbage.

Hufred inhag durwiig affo huiel.

Is gibberish, but could equally be Tongue. Unless you're claiming that people can only make up gibberish consisting of one sound. In that case, I've heard many, many people speaking Tongue.

Alternatively, you could link to studies to back up your extraordinary statement that people can't make up gibberish which fools linguists.
 
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