One word. CRAP. Unadulterated, absolute CRAP

Babbledy babblety
Jibberty jabberty!

Speaking in tongues is simply giving in to hysterical irrationality.

Not bull, just another form of trance state. Another mental state, like meditation produces.

Evidence of a trance state does not equal evidence of any spirit, holy or otherwise.

So THAT is what happens when I pass gas.... I was wondering...

I don't see a major medical journal cited anywhere. Until I do, this means nothing.

FYI: They have agenda which might effect the way they present and write up the material.

Christian Voice is an American conservative political advocacy group, known as part of the Christian right within U.S. politics. It is a project of the American Service Council. In 1980, Christian Voice claimed 107,000 members including 37,000 pastors from 45 denominations. Christian Voice was headquartered at the Heritage Foundation in the 1970s and 1980s and is currently located in suburban Washington, D.C., in Alexandria, Virginia.

Christian Voice was among a group of four prominent Christian Right groups formed in 1978 and 1979. Christian Voice, Moral Majority, The Religious Roundtable and the National Christian Action Coalition all enjoyed high times before being reduced to rubble by the end of Ronald Reagan's Presidency.

Christian Voice is best known as the originator and developer of the Moral Report Cards the "Congressional Report Card" and the "Candidates Scorecard" that were issued mainly between the years 1980 and 1984. It helped organize grassroots action through use of its "Church Networking Guide"

[en.m.wikipedia.org]

So after diving about two links deep into the article, this is based on the research of Dr. andrew Newberg (http://www.andrewnewberg.com/research) who started the branch of Neurotheology, which studies the effect of prayer and belief.

Looking over his website, it is clear there is a bias in the Q&A section affirming that God is "everywhere".

His research seeks to use fMRIs and other medical scans of the brain to study various religious effects. However there seems to be a strong bias to selecting and interpreting the data. The sample size is too small and there any conclusion has no statistical significance.

Interestly, i checked in publication list back to 2005 and couldn't find any journal article about "speaking in tongues". In the video the journalist cites that Dr. Newberg claims “When they are actually engaged in this whole very intense spiritual practice for them, their frontal lobes tend to go down in activity, but I think it’s very consistent with the kind of experience that they have because they say that they are not in charge—it’s the voice of God, the Spirit of God that’s moving through them.”

If I recall, the speech centers are in the posterior region of frontal lobe, known as the Broca area, known for speech production. I wish I could read the paper and see if he had a control, where untranced people babbled and also showed a reduction in use of Broca's area, which makes sense if you are making sounds without intending speech.

If anyone can find that paper let me know.

[sciencemag.org]

[dana.org]

This is from Wikipedia:

“In 1972, William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, published a thorough assessment of Pentecostal glossolalia that became a classic work on its linguistic characteristics.[11]”

Samarin determined that the words uttered are random mixtures of syllables from the speakers particular language and that there is no correlation among the speech of different speakers. I’m assuming also that two episodes from the same speaker would have no meaningful similarities in terms of common words.

Speaking in tongues is just random noise but it might have value in inducing a trance.

What a load of crap!

It's all just so pathetic.
The believers will say anything to justify their bullshit.

I think there is something to this. If I hold my tongue and try to speak I sound like I really know what I am talking about. The problem with this is that no one can understand me, so it must be dog trying to get my attention.

Lol you have got to be kidding me

Ain't that article some demogoguery.

There was a study a while ago (can't remember where) but they noticed that when speaking in tongues (or what most people call jibberish) parts of the brain did function different.

Does not prove the holy spook exists. Different state of mind. So if I get so drunk and am slurring does that prove there is a higher power?

One individual’s ecstatic speech was tape recorded and played back separately to many individuals who believed that they had the gift of interpreting tongues. Their interpretations were quite inconsistent.
How could speaking in tongues be a real literal glossa, or language, if the interpretations of that very same language are contradictory?
Jeff Wehr, “Speaking in Tongues,” Our Firm Foundation, Vol. 11, #11, 1996-NOV-11,

Glossolalia = check the sufferer for other signs of a stroke...

No kidding here - minutes matter.

Ho si condila seeka! Not too much of the brain is active in speaking these heavenly languages. Pure bull.

It’s been established that people speaking “in tongues” don’t actually speak any language. We can all make sounds with our mouths. The fact they produce sounds, but those sounds have no meaning is evidence of the fact there is nothing special about those sounds.

A long time ago people believed foreign languages unknown to the person were actually spoken. This would be miraculous. Now that we know they just make up some ridiculous, embarrassing sounds, any speculation on the matter is simply stupid.

It’s just a very shameful practice. I’m ashamed of what future generations will think of us when they’ll watch videos of our religious practices. It’s time to move on.

Yeah, I buy that. This claim is meaningless unless they somehow proved God as well. Without that, they can't credit it to the "Holy Spirit."

Drop the 'heavenly' reference, and I can see the value of self-induced trance/euphoria, endorphin flood and emotional release. I doubt most of these folks are allowed such pleasurable feelings in any other form, except perhaps the church potluck and dessert table.

I can’t find the paper referred to here but I have looked up some of his subsequent studies which are reasonably sound experimentally.

Here is s link to them if you wanted to see, especially the ones about Islamic prayer and trance states

[andrewnewberg.com]

I would like to read the actual study. I doubt it said anything like that. Scientific studies are notoriously misinterpreted by the media.

In my opinion, speaking in tongues is spiritual narcissism whereby the person is trying to prove how much more holy he is than everyone else by doing this. It’s pretty much like the salesmen saying have you seen the new Ferrari I bought this week.