This actual article discussing the studies on the subject is far better than anything said in this thread so far. It’s not just babbling. You have a goal to start it and a goal to stop it, and can even control some aspects. But the actual sounds coming out of your mouth are not under control.
I like the term “dissociative hyper-arousal state,” used in the article. That’s what I was trying to articulate.
I don’t believe what they say. These people are practiced, it’s a common technique for fundamentalist scam artists. Anyone can speak gibberish, and with practice make it sound like just like the religious speakers in tongue. This doesn’t randomly affect people very often, but it occurs a high percentage of the time in some fundamentalist sects. Chronos is right, the only mystery here is why anybody believes in this crap when everybody can do it and they know that everybody can do it.
It’s basically speaking like Adriano Celentano in this Youtube video (feel free to skip to 1min40sec marker)
People seem to understand something, but not really understanding anything. someone in the crowed says how intelligent, spiritual, etc is and the others just agree.
Here’s another example
I used to attend a Pentecostal church where I heard tongues for the first time, I found that using tongues in my personal prayer time relaxed me and helped me in my conversation with God, for me it is a very personal language between God and myself
Yes, Pentecostalism and fundamentalism are two different things. But I think you overplay the separation. They overlap far more than in conservative dress. I actually find it easier not to draw lines between the two, but see them as somewhat overlapping circles within evangelicalism.
The more parochial versions of Pentecostalism are very much like fundamentalism with Pentecostalism thrown on top. It’s not just the dress (which I would actually characterize as more restrictive), but the entire attitude. The same scriptures are used to indicate that women are subservient to men. The same type of homeschooling, using the same books, is often used. That isolationist nature is in full force, as is the rejection of modernism. The Pastor still controls his flock, telling you that you can’t watch television or movies or dance or all that.
But there are ones that took the less strict approach. They don’t even have the dress requirements. They mostly eschew the parochialism (though they give it lip service.) They have female preachers. They’re much more like modern evangelicals but with Pentecostal beliefs attached.
Then there are the snake handlers, who went the other way, entirely. They reasoned that, if speaking and tongues was real, and miraculous healings till occurred, then they should also be able to take a (poorly attested) scripture about people being able to walk among snakes and not be poisoned. Rather than take this metaphorically as a statement about being in the evil of the world, they take it literally, and use it as proof of their faith.
I finally want to point out that there are charismatics, who take in some of Pentecostalism, but remove the essentialism component: Speaking in tongues is just one way to “feel the Spirit.” This can be placed on top of any form of Christianity, even Catholicism.
And, because I don’t want to make yet another post, but still couldn’t work this in: I find glossolalia to be the best explanation for what is described as “speaking in tongues” in the Bible. I don’t mean that you have to believe they’re really speaking another language, but that it fits all the descriptions save for the one in Acts 2. It’s said to be meaningless noise unless someone interprets it, and interpretation takes a divine gift, not knowledge of a real language.
I would think it would make far more sense to a secularist that, if there was something that happened, it would be replicable today, rather than some miracle that disappeared. It would also make far more sense that xenolallia (speaking an actual other langauge) was attached to it afterwards than for the entire concept of “speaking in tongues” to be made up.
It’s got to describe something, and this seems the best candidate. The idea was just lost in the formalization of Christian worship.
You make the assumption that the Bible should be taken as…well, gospel. It makes much more sense to me, as an atheist, to assume that the second- or third-hand mythologizing that is Acts isn’t even describing something that actually happened, or is describing it in a manner that perhaps doesn’t adhere very strictly to truth. Frankly, I don’t really care if it was glossolalia or a (believed-to-be-)genuine miracle that Luke describes in the Pentecost story. It’s unlikely to be true, no matter which it was, so concerning myself with what it actually was is a waste of time.
What makes it a scam if the people believe it? Do you think my grandmother lied about her speaking in tongues?
“…a common technique for fundamentalist scam artists”
Was your grandmother a fundamentalist scam artist?
You seem to imply that all fundamentalists are scam artists.
You may have inferred that but it was not my implication.
I very specifically stated that is was used by scam artists, not that all people who speak in tongues are scam artists.
So… there is no free will ? The faithfull are really totally under gods control…
You can objectively test, with that brain scan, not neccessarily of speaking in tongues, but when performing at least some action they can do … So you test all your leaders for their lack of free will and if they have any freewill they are faking their faith…
No its really not a demonstration of faith, so not an answer of the freewill question, and not a test for faith.
If you are in an audience and everyone is clapping, you feel compelled to clap.
Its just the same. Just a compulsion to do what is expected. Not divine intervention at all.
No, at the Tower of Babel everyone spoke the same language. God decided they were getting too full of themselves, with their idea of building a tower that would reach up to Heaven, so he made them all start speaking different languages. They were then unable to coordinate their efforts (the planner couldn’t talk to the foreman, and neither of them could talk to the workers, &c), so they gave up on the project and spread out across the world, taking their new languages with them.