Speaking in tongues--stolen idea - Page 3 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

kerry · #31 11-19-2006, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kip Foss

Kerry,

If you recorded yourself speaking in tongues and replayed it back say 5 years from now could you understand what you had said? Or is this 'SIT' simply gobbledygook as a child might babble? Can anyone else under stand your 'sit'?

It would be nonsense all the time. It's like gobbledygook spoken by a person used to speaking a meaningful language. There is a practice of Pentecostals in which one person stands up in a church service and speaks in tongues and then afterwards another person stands up and 'translates'. But it's not as if the second person knew the language the first person was speaking in. The translation is magical. The tongues speaker may speak for 1 minute and the translator might speak for 5. There are accounts amongst Pentecostals of people speaking in tongues and a bystander saying the tongues speaker was speaking a foreign language but in my experience, these have always been third hand. The thousands of people I have heard speak in tongues have always been speaking nonsense.
Pentecostals do it all the time, either in a group in a church service or at home alone in their 'prayer closet'.

t walgamuth · #32 11-19-2006, 08:20 PM

do you see it as an important religious tool?

tom w

kerry · #33 11-19-2006, 08:49 PM

No. I think it has very undesireable consequences. Since it is a very unusual practice, developed within a tight religious community, it is very easy for Pentecostals to see speaking in tongues as a miracle. God is breaking into the universe to violate the laws of nature. They then begin to see the whole of the universe as filled with miracles. Their personal lives are interpreted in terms of miracle and history itself is understood in terms of miracle. This is counterproductive to serious science, social and political philosophy, not to mention deliberate planning of an individual life.
Since very few people outside of Pentecostalism are interested in speaking in tongues it is very easy for Pentecostals to think they are God's specially chosen people. Tongues are the sign of this.
So, while Protestantism may have produced the Enlightenment with it's emphasis on the written word, Protestant Pentecostalism has the potential to destroy the Enlightenment with its emphasis on the spoken irrational word.

t walgamuth · #34 11-19-2006, 10:35 PM

although i would never be capable of expressing it so fully and eloquently, that is exactly how i feel.

thank you for sharing that with us.

tom w

John Doe · #35 11-20-2006, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry edwards

I think peer pressure has a lot to do with it. I first began to speak in tongues at about the age of 12 at a camp much like JesusCamp when all the other kids were being baptized in the spirit also. However, like drinking beer, it can be the result of peer pressure, but the experience itself is 'real' in the sense that something very unusual is happening in the brain.
I can still speak in tongues today, even though I am no longer a Pentecostal believer. Whatever I learned to do as a result of the social context in which I was raised is still a skill that the average person does not have. I think studying glossolalia might be useful in understanding more about our conscious control of language and it's connection to unconscious linguistic processing in the brain.
It's quite possible that there are a variety of mechanisms for speaking in tongues and not all practioners create the phenomena the same way. In my case, my mental experience is a kind of 'letting go' of my linguistic control and letting phonemes spew out of my mouth or into my mind in a random manner. It's quite different than consciously trying to string together meaningless phonemes.
I've never heard a tongues speaker use anything other than the phonemes that are a part of their natural language. For instance, I've never heard the clicking sounds associated with African languages or the phonemes typical of Vietnamese used by english speaking americans, when speaking in tongues.

I here ya, and don't take this as me not being serious: have you ever heard a jazz singer scat sing? I have seen some guys just go off (I get lost in it myself) and get a feeling much like improvising on the trumpet in a jam. Granted, the musician is generally trying to stay within a certain key, so it may be a little more structured, but why aren't the two similar?

I guess bottom line is that I believe it is conscious, learned, then possibly unconscious when the learner gets it down.

kerry · #36 11-20-2006, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Doe

I here ya, and don't take this as me not being serious: have you ever heard a jazz singer scat sing? I have seen some guys just go off (I get lost in it myself) and get a feeling much like improvising on the trumpet in a jam. Granted, the musician is generally trying to stay within a certain key, so it may be a little more structured, but why aren't the two similar?

I guess bottom line is that I believe it is conscious, learned, then possibly unconscious when the learner gets it down.

That's a very interesting comparison. I think Newberg should put a scat singer in the scanner and compare brains. Speaking in tongues is often done to music while in a group so there could be a connection. Does anyone here scat sing who can address the issue of how much the singer feels in control of the sounds they utter?

I think in one sense, the practice of tongues is clearly learned. People don't do it 'naturally', just like they don't write naturally. But I'm not convinced that people learn to produce meaningless sounds by listening to others, experiment with it, and then move it over into the unconscious. I base this both on my experience and on the accounts of tongue speakers. There are tons of accounts of the people describing tongues as the 'Spirit overcoming them' even for first time tongues speakers. It seems to me that such frequent accounts are only possible if there is a significant difference between willed everyday speech and unwilled tongues speaking.

John Doe · #37 11-20-2006, 11:25 AM

I think I can almost relate this scat-singing thing: you are in a jazz hall, probably somewhat under the influence of 'something' and the instrumental music is so loud, its the only thing you can hear--its so loud you can't think. You start to utter sounds, but, these sounds are within a certain key. So, in my opinion (as a former recreational scat singer) you don't have control over what comes out--other than keeping tones in key. You are 'overcome' by the spirit of the music, or one wouldn't sit on the sidelines and scat sing anyway.

I don't see it as any different than improvisational music, or dancing for that matter. You don't know what you are going to do until a millisecond before it comes out, and if you get profficient enough, you close your eyes and it just happens.....

Check out some of the jazz and reggae on BETJazz that they show from the Carribean--those guys go into trance for hours.

John Doe · #38 11-20-2006, 11:31 AM

I found this link, and the thought of it, Yaweh strike me down, made me literally laugh out loud: http://www.maryfeinsinger.com/index.htm.

kerry · #39 11-20-2006, 11:45 AM

That's pretty funny.

I agree with the dancing analogy. In black pentecostal churches, music, dance and tongues all go hand in hand. The Spirit overcomes us in all three. In fact, the appeal of a black pentecostal church service is roughly similar to the appeal of a night in a jazz club. Would it be possible to brain scan someone in a religious (or non religous0 moment of dance) and compare the brain to a tongues speaker?
Perhaps tongues evolved because dance was forbidden in the Holiness churches where tongues started. We just can't always live within the rigid structures that society requires. Tongues and dance are the outlets.

What do you think of a religion based on this sense of 'being overcome'? It seems very different from religion based on deliberate effort and self-discipline like Buddhism or Confucianism.

John Doe · #40 11-20-2006, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry edwards

What do you think of a religion based on this sense of 'being overcome'? It seems very different from religion based on deliberate effort and self-discipline like Buddhism or Confucianism.

You mean like Southern Baptist? I know I oversimplify more than a lot of you guys, but this is how I keep Eastern and Western(classic) religions seperate--this very distinction.

I went to a Baptist church one time in Augusta, GA (yes, I was trying to get in some girls pants). They had an alter-call (my first one). People that I knew were absolute heathens, were piling into the isle, lining up to go up and profess their faith in the front of the church (and also on TV

). They were overcome. I spoke to a guy about it at school the next week, and he said, "man, i just got caught up in the moment."

I think being 'overcome' is a temporary thing that leads to a lot of jokes about what folks do on Sat. night to have to go to church on Sun. Yeah, this is a lifestyle, but not what I would consider any type of true devotion because it seems folks have a short memory of the feeling and the faith doesn't stick around 24 hrs. a day. I think the Far Eastern religions (again--oversimplification) lead to a more pure devotion, which again, is just another lifestyle.