The chipmunk voices sounded as if they came from an echo chamber,
That's exactly how it sounds when someone speaks in multiple voices. High pitched, echoing and as if coming from elsewhere. It's an old-as-the-hills stage trick. Check it out, there are plenty of videos of the phenomenon.
Mutate and Survive
Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.
On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage
...in the name of a form of rationality backed by NOTHING.
Odd thing to say. Rationality is backed by reason, critical thinking, the scientific method and objective evidence. And, god forbid, proveable outcomes.
On the other hand, irrationality is useful for what exactly?
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
Isn't that used to prove all those things that never happened done by those who never existed?
Yeh.
But to be fair, irrationality is useful for stuff that doesn't need to be, well, rational - comedy, modern art, procreation, drunkeness, poetry and so on. People like to be irrational sometimes. You can add religion in there if you must.
Irrationality is fine in it's place, but it's place is nowhere near anything that needs to be factual like are there real demons?
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
You know the drill. You were in churches half your life. I know you don't have the ability to watch the video, but for the rest of you, this is likely similar to the type of tongue talking that we have seen in church. Personally, it does not impress or influence me any more than a prayer spoken in English does...but my point is that it can be started and stopped by the one praying...it is not at all like Tourettes. https://youtu.be/vsrwgd7rnR0?t=303 Start at 5:00 to skip the mumbo jumbo
Edited by Phat, : No reason given.
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo
Subjectivism may very well undermine Christianity. In the same way that "allowing people to choose what they want to be when they grow up" undermines communism.~Stile
Cant read that preview...but you cant watch my video so we are even.
All I'm saying is that tongues can be controlled. Personally, I am unimpressed by them...but wont belittle them...I have a few friends raised with that belief...
Lately Ive been studying the opposing views than my own. I ordered a book by Bart Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus and am forcing myself to confront it. You and i discussed dualing evidence earlier...perhaps in another thread, and I found that strictly speaking my side has no real evidence apart from the subjective experience of we the believers.
I see why you concluded that God was fiction yet embraced the message.
I cannot stop believing that God exists. I have considered it and refused to do it.
I believe that humans will collectively go that direction and that logic, reason, and reality will confirm the decision as best for humanity.
But I believe that humanity needs God.
And you, a thorn in the flesh that you are, have convicted me with your command (that jesus told me in the book) to go feed people and give them spare change.
But that action alone gives me personally little comfort. If I died doing the right thing, what good would it do me? At best I am remembered as one who lived generously and with integrity. But I am still dead and gone.
So I might ask why eternal life is such a silly concept to chase? mortality is depressing.
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo
Subjectivism may very well undermine Christianity. In the same way that "allowing people to choose what they want to be when they grow up" undermines communism.~Stile
I bet you don't even know what is meant by the supposed "structural similarities." In any case that misses the point. Tourette syndrome involves sudden spasmodic movements and the blurting out of words, neither of which is found in tongues speaking. The "gift" of tongues is usually a string of sounds that repeat, Tourettes is usually just a word or a few words and no repeat, and in the speaker's own language. The speaker can control when the tongues speaking starts and when it stops though not the sounds themselves, but Tourette's just happens out of the blue and can't be controlled.
There is no MEANINGFUL comparison with Tourette syndrome.
If you want to get a balanced view from both sides I would recommend this book which is a debate between N T Wright and Marcus Borg.... Or here is a you tube debate between Wright and Dom Crossan
Um, what "both sides" could you mean here? Exactly what sort of "balance" is Phat to find between a heretic and a heretic, between the heretic Wright and a revisionist in the case of Crossan or a "progressive" in the case of Borg? Eh? Of course Phat gravitates to the anti-traditional anyway -- I find it very hard to get through any of the writings of the heretics like Bart Ehrman myself -- and Phat's rejection of Bible inerrancy doesn't bode well for his ever choosing the traditional theology anyway... but hm, isn't the debate in question between that traditional view and any of the heretics, revisionists, progressives and etc.?
Gosh, it seems to me that if separate voices are heard, especially by more than one normally sane person, voices expressing clear things in English from the region of a person's abdomen, say, rather than a voice from his own mouth, it seems eminently rational to conclude that this is not a normal communication from that person, nor a rumbling stomach due to indigestion, nor a hallucination etc etc etc. Rationality means judging things correctly according to accurate perception, but what you are really talking about is not rationality but imposing a bias on perception.
That's exactly how it sounds when someone speaks in multiple voices. High pitched, echoing and as if coming from elsewhere. It's an old-as-the-hills stage trick. Check it out, there are plenty of videos of the phenomenon.
What a coincidence then, since there was obviously no stage trick that Phat experienced. I also heard a chipmunky voice once, commenting on my belief in Jesus Christ, but it didn't have an echoing quality. It sounded like it came from the air a few feet from me. Another time I heard a deeper voice that did echo, like it was inside a steel drum. Actually it sounded echoey for a moment and then it suddenly died, as if suddenly snuffed out in a vacuum, which was an unnatural effect too. It was telling me to pray for someone everyone knew to pray for anyway. It was so clearly demonic it made me laugh. They often like to sound "Christian" so Christians might befriend them instead of hating them.
I'm sure nobody else would have heard these voices, that I was hearing them with a spiritual faculty and not my physical ears, but in the case of demon-possession anyone can hear them.
With unbelievers, of course, just the fact that they are supernatural beings is enough to seduce them into whatever little projects they would like to impose on gullible people, like the "Urantia" stuff, or "The Seth Books" or many other demon-inspired "teachings" including, I am sure, all the various Christian heresies.
ABE: Oh yeah, one I forgot: Oprah's favorite "A Course in Miracles." There are lots more I know I'm forgetting. Them demons are always at work trying to trip up silly humanity, and they succeed only too well. If they don't get you with a stupid treatise on fake supernatural explanations they'll get you with something "scientific" that denies the supernatural. Smart little devils.
Faith wrote Um, what "both sides" could you mean here? Exactly what sort of "balance" is Phat to find between a heretic and a heretic, between the heretic Wright and a revisionist in the case of Crossan or a "progressive" in the case of Borg? Eh? Of course Phat gravitates to the anti-traditional anyway -- I find it very hard to get through any of the writings of the heretics like Bart Ehrman myself -- and Phat's rejection of Bible inerrancy doesn't bode well for his ever choosing the traditional theology anyway... but hm, isn't the debate in question between that traditional view and any of the heretics, revisionists, progressives and etc.?
GDR writes We definitely disagree about what a the traditional Christian view is. It is a good thing you were not around at the time of the reformation or we would still be buying indulgences.
However, if our faith is so weak that we have to be afraid of reading the views of those who have different opinions then our faith is weak indeed.
Borg and Crossan are roughly speaking in the same camp as Ehrman. From my own standpoint I have read them all and IMHO it showed how weak their positions were. Essentially they start from the standpoint that we know that scientific laws are absolutes so we know that resurrections do not happen. As a result any explanation for the accounts around Jesus such as the resurrection, no matter how far fetched, are better explanations than what the compilers of the Gospels wrote.
NT or Tom Wright has, more than any one else, brought the historical Jesus into focus with his background as a theologian, as a first century historian and with his fluency in Greek, Latin etc. It seems to me that as Phat seems to be struggling with what to believe right now that he will always struggle until he hears the views of people who hold a variety of views.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
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