I don’t think you can blame or credit religion for individual people’s behavior. Good people will be good people regardless of whether they’re religious or atheists, and bad people are the same.
The Gospel indeed says that. And I can’t remember what verses my old Foursquare church used to justify it as a ‘private prayer language’, but I’m sure there was something.
As for it meaning something to the person uttering it, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. As I’ve said, I was not in a ‘state of ecstasy’ when I first became capable of, uh, rattling off syllables that I still think sound like a Native American language, (but very probably are not). I could do it right now, sitting here. Same sounds. No emotion. No meaning to me. No idea what it’s supposed to accomplish. Even back when I called myself a believer, I simply “took it on faith” that it meant something to God because it sure as heck meant nothing to me then. Even less so today.
I used to envy the people who had - I mean felt, or experienced - what I would now call ‘a religious experience’ (though then I would have called it ‘the presence of the Holy Spirit’ or something like that). The sorts of churches I went to were really big on the whole idea of experiencing a relationship with God, the way one might experience a relationship with someone you know and love. You had to feel it. I never could. I’m not utterly convinced that most of them did, either - I ran into a lot of people who confessed privately that they didn’t feel anything, and that prayer didn’t seem to work for them, who were publically much more fervent and self-sure.
I’ll buy the ‘power of suggestion’ suggestion, but I still don’t know how to classify my ability to still make this…ah…speech, when I don’t even believe in it anymore.
Especially since youre a guy!
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no I’m not.
no I’m not.
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CITE?
CITE?
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Well here
and ummm… [here](file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/jennifer%20fought/My%20Documents/My%20Pictures/cokejen.jpe)
I will honestly speak to the power of tongues. Yes. I had a powerful experience. I was a child of 10 or 11 and the whole experience is quite indelible. I went to a church service with family and was totally agape and frightened during the proscribed ecstacy. I really sid feel a pwerful emotional connection and although they explained it as the spirit. I saw it as the ignorance and fear. Quite an exquisite bond although under all the princiupals that I have come to despise. It is dishonest. I was ignorant and afraid and they sucked me in.