tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post6524768407898387167..comments2024-03-25T17:35:02.238-04:00Comments on Debunking Christianity: My storyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-48837475866768513002007-11-09T02:44:00.000-05:002007-11-09T02:44:00.000-05:00While we're waiting on tenterhooks for Joe's incon...While we're waiting on tenterhooks for Joe's incontrovertible evidence for xenoglossy, I've got some of my own.<BR/><BR/>Just this morning, while thinking about something completely different, these words came unbidden to my mind:<BR/><BR/>ugga wugga<BR/>migga bugga<BR/>siggy wiggy boo<BR/><BR/>Knowing that they were somehow significant, I did some research (unfortunately, I've since misplaced the sources, but you can take my word for it) that this enigmatic message is in Akkadian, a language I swear having no previous knowledge of, and it means:<BR/><BR/>"diminutive underwear troll softly presumes who?"<BR/><BR/>What are the chances of that happening randomly? Of course, the question is now, who sent me this message? I sort of doubt that Jesus would; perhaps some Akkadian trickster god-magician sorcerer thingie?zilchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01695741977946935771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-39116580298899530212007-11-09T02:41:00.000-05:002007-11-09T02:41:00.000-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.zilchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01695741977946935771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-28194723412929054192007-11-06T08:52:00.000-05:002007-11-06T08:52:00.000-05:00I hate to be impatient, but I'd honestly like to k...I hate to be impatient, but I'd honestly like to know if Joe is backing off of his claim of verifiable xenoglossy. It's been almost two days since the claim was made and challenged, and I'd like to know if Joe stands behind it or retracts it.Shygetzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12587529149916263563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-86672096691114237882007-11-05T16:47:00.000-05:002007-11-05T16:47:00.000-05:00Marlene, amazing story of yours. " I noticed a gr...Marlene, amazing story of yours. <BR/><BR/>" I noticed a growing softness in my judgment of human beings. We were all in the same boat, struggling to meet our needs."<BR/><BR/>I've found that this is one of the best things about atheism/humanism - the acknowledgment that people are people, that it's not black and white, there aren't "sinners", there's no demonic influence, etc. It's just a bunch of people trying to figure out what to do. It leads to a striking view of human equality, don't you think?King Aardvarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02785457928646226831noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-2141302997410343822007-11-05T16:12:00.000-05:002007-11-05T16:12:00.000-05:00Thanks for sharing a story about departing from Ch...Thanks for sharing a story about departing from Christianity - though it is very unlike my own, I did grow up in a place where certain things were never questioned, and I was astonished by college where I saw people who I was warned against lead happy, productive lives.<BR/><BR/>One note, though.<BR/><BR/>Behaviorism never asserted and does not assert that all behavior is learned. In fact, behaviorism is a philosophy if science and does not assert anything about what one should expect to find in the world - only how one should go about to find it.Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgrenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13874190879054853053noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-2388275260579583172007-11-05T09:04:00.000-05:002007-11-05T09:04:00.000-05:00I have had a similar experience with learning a la...I have had a similar experience with learning a language. My best friend in junior high was Hungarian, and I used to visit him a lot. I learned how to say "hello" and "thank you" and a couple of other phrases, but nothing more.<BR/><BR/>Years later, I took a course in Hungarian, and found that an amazing amount of it seemed very familiar, especially given the fact that it's not at all related to English or German. Of course, it was obvious that I had overheard John talking with his family many times, but I certainly had no conscious memory of any words. We do pick up lots of stuff without realizing it.zilchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01695741977946935771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-16096417201985919522007-11-05T08:42:00.000-05:002007-11-05T08:42:00.000-05:00Of course, you must know that I suspect that the s...Of course, you must know that I suspect that the subconcious mind or even unconcious mind is responsible for all these things. We react instintively in ways we are not aware to many thing, much moreso than we realize or want to admit. There was a recent Newsweek article that, sorry, I can't find, on how our brain takes limited data and partial patterns and fills in to make something of it, and I suspect it it thse sorts of things that lead to hearing prophetic voices and speaking 'languages' we didn't know we knew.<BR/>This may or may not be related: I cannot speak Spanish, but after having worked among landscapse crews, I may have absorbed some things. I designed my kitchen for a remodel, and when the Spanish-speaking crew showed up to intall my counter top and I was painting in the room, I realized I could understant what they were saying - as long as they talked about the counter top. They were saying that part of it ws cut wrong and deciding what to do and how much of it to install or whether to wait and install it all later. THey sent someone to call back to the store for a decision and when they went to duscussing their weekends and personal lives, I could not understand a bit, but when they went back to talkiing about the kitchen, I understood again. So when they reached a threshold of words and terms I understood, my brain filled in and made it comprehensible. Could I ever absorb enough that when in a certain brain state, I could speak the language? Maybe.goprairiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00532311590000341237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-76328241739726700082007-11-05T04:20:00.000-05:002007-11-05T04:20:00.000-05:00Indeed, prup. We are all adept at picking up name...Indeed, prup. We are all adept at picking up names, words, accents- you name it- and forgetting that we did. As mentioned in the wikipedia link, most of the cases of xenoglossy examined seem to be the result of exposure to the "other" language, often in childhood, that was later forgotten.<BR/><BR/>A similar thing happened to me once: in a harmony class, I composed a piece that I was very proud of, and didn't realize until after turning it in that it was practically note-for-note the same as a guitar etude by Tarrega that I had played years previously. I did tell the professor, who was amused and admitted the same thing had happened to him as well.zilchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01695741977946935771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-51214064158595176992007-11-05T03:35:00.000-05:002007-11-05T03:35:00.000-05:00Marlene:I can't add anything to the praise you hav...Marlene:<BR/>I can't add anything to the praise you have justly received for your writing and your story. All I can say is thank you for telling it to us, and to say how grateful I am you survived to reach where you are today.<BR/><BR/>Zilch:<BR/>If there is a fairly solid-seeming case of 'xenoglossy' -- thanks for the new word, btw -- it needs to be looked at <I>very</I> carefully, because we all know much more and perceive much more than we are consciously aware of, and it is very easy to fool ourselves in that way.<BR/><BR/>Two examples: I may not be the only person old enough to remember THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY, but it made quite a sensation in the Fifties, a book claiming that hypnosis had 'proven' the existence of past lives and reincarnation. The story, a Virginia housewife who, under hypnosis claimed to have been an Irish peasant girl named Bridget "Bridey" Murphy in the last century was very convincing for three reasons.<BR/>First, because the 'past life' was so humble a one. Most people who claim 'reincarnation' claim to have been Cleopatra's step-sister, or Napoleon's Prime Minister, or a Cardinal or whatever, not a 'nobody.'<BR/>Second because, while not all the details she gave were accurate, many of them were, and they were details it <I>seemed</I> unlikely that a Virginia housewife who had never traveled or lived in Ireland, who was not a scholar or much of a reader, could have picked up.<BR/>Third, because there was an obvious sincerity to both parties, and no one has, as far as I know, ever seriously claimed there was an conscious fraud involved.<BR/><BR/>But the story was important enough that a lot of people spent time checking it out. (There was no record of the Bridey Murphy she claimed to have been, but record-keeping was not universal enough to take this as disproof.) Eventually people discovered that, while the housewife had no conscious memory of this, there had been a woman named Bridie Murphy Corkrell who had lived across the street from the housewife when sh4e was a child, and that while she'd been raised by a Norwegian Uncle, her real parents, who she'd lived with until three, were Irish. And the stories she'd heard from both had lain dormant in her mind, totally unavailable until she, unconsciously, used them to spin out the fantasy she knew the hypnotist wanted.<BR/><BR/>A more personal -- and shorter -- example. For years I have, on occasion, used the pen name "Jeff Glencannon," mostly for reviews of various types. For the first couple of years, when I was asked where I got the name Glencannon, I swore that I had made it up, that it had just 'popped into my head.' I insisted, and would have continued to insist under oath or with a gun at my head, that I had never heard the name before.<BR/><BR/>Then I picked up an old PocketBook -- the paperback book that is, I ain't into drag -- from the forties, (and I had collected a lot of them) and there, among the list of books that occupied several pages was MR. GLENCANNON - a collection of -- as I eventually learned -- delightful stories from the Saturday Evening Post about a delightfully disreputable and drunken Scots 'ship's engineer.' But I had no memory of having seen the entry when i came up with the name, or for years after.<BR/><BR/>So if we get a case of 'xenoglossy,' the odds are this is not a mystical experience but something constructed from 'subconscious memories.' (Of course, I'd argue that all mystical experiences are equally concocted by the mind of the person, but that's another argument.)Prup (aka Jim Benton)https://www.blogger.com/profile/08376467128665482055noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-45805466563783686212007-11-04T14:14:00.000-05:002007-11-04T14:14:00.000-05:00j.l. hinman- you say:In cases where a person does ...j.l. hinman- you say:<BR/><BR/><I>In cases where a person does speak a language not naturally known to them, this has been documented, brain chemistry cannot explain this.</I><BR/><BR/>If, by "language", you mean a <I>real</I> language, not previously known to the speaker, and not just phonemes of one's native language rearranged so that it <I>sounds</I> like a language, the term is <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoglossy" REL="nofollow">xenoglossy</A>, and there's no good evidence that it has ever happened.zilchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01695741977946935771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-83640418192389554092007-11-04T12:48:00.001-05:002007-11-04T12:48:00.001-05:00goprairie said...what has anyone read in terms of ...goprairie said...<BR/><BR/>what has anyone read in terms of these? people who claim to experience them certaiinly do beleive in them, so they are not fake 'parlor trickery'. but what are they really?<BR/><BR/>My reply...<BR/><BR/>Glossalalia is the term for it. It has been studied and it is a phenomenon that crosses over into many different cultures and religions. It does not belong exclusively to the Christian religion, that's for sure.<BR/><BR/>These ecstatic utterances are not languages. They have no grammar or syntax, so they can't be. They appear to be just manifestations of an overloaded brain from a bombardment of high intensity religious and emotional experiences. <BR/><BR/>(JH)Joe E. Holmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10273702675019012966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-28438317307404610652007-11-04T12:48:00.000-05:002007-11-04T12:48:00.000-05:00i reject speaking in tongues and prophecy as mysti...i reject speaking in tongues and prophecy as mystical or spritual out for logical reasons, but surely someone must have proposed brain chemistry explanations or psychological explanations for such thing. what has anyone read in terms of these? people who claim to experience them certaiinly do beleive in them, so they are not fake 'parlor trickery'. but what are they really?<BR/><BR/><B>Most of mainstream Christianity agrees with you. One of the top researchers of the god parts of the brain, Andre Newberg, points out that nothing in that work that can anyway disprove God or religious experience. The most this can ever prove is either they God allowed nature to develop, or it developed that way on its own.<BR/><BR/>In cases where a person does speak a language not naturally known to them, this has been documented, brain chemistry cannot explain this. see Peter Farb, Word Play</B>Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-42281154953669889972007-11-04T12:44:00.000-05:002007-11-04T12:44:00.000-05:00http://metacrock.blogspot.com/here is the blog spo...http://metacrock.blogspot.com/<BR/><BR/>here is the blog spot I spoke ofJoseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-77673313319255339722007-11-04T11:43:00.000-05:002007-11-04T11:43:00.000-05:00i reject speaking in tongues and prophecy as mysti...i reject speaking in tongues and prophecy as mystical or spritual out for logical reasons, but surely someone must have proposed brain chemistry explanations or psychological explanations for such thing. what has anyone read in terms of these? people who claim to experience them certaiinly do beleive in them, so they are not fake 'parlor trickery'. but what are they really?goprairiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00532311590000341237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-24807927030963167052007-11-04T11:18:00.000-05:002007-11-04T11:18:00.000-05:00Marlene, I can empathize with your story to a degr...Marlene, I can empathize with your story to a degree. I grew up in a fundamentalist home. While my parents were very loving and happy and gave us a great nurturing childhood, my brother and I, the group we was absurd. I became an atheist in high school because of that group.<BR/><BR/>It did cause problems but when I found the good part of religious experience that was the healing. Though I applaud your attempts at helping people extricate themselves from what can be a very abusive environment, I do think you are throwing the baby out with the bath water (if I may borrow from the world of the trite phrase).<BR/><BR/>I am writing some comments in response to your other piece, should be up today. But I am not "attacking" you. I do not see anything to attack. I want to deal with what you do gently because I think it has value.<BR/><BR/>I also find it very interesting that you use the Ground of being thing because that's my view of God. I draw different conclusions than you do. ;-)Joseph Hinman (Metacrock)https://www.blogger.com/profile/06957529748541493998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-91747769502958702772007-11-04T10:25:00.000-05:002007-11-04T10:25:00.000-05:00Thanks for a heartfelt story, Marlene. A funny co...Thanks for a heartfelt story, Marlene. A funny coincidence: I grew up in the Bay Area (in El Cerrito) but I now live in Vienna. My daughter, who is also seventeen, attended the School of the Arts for one semester last year, studying filmmaking- she's considering it as a career. The two of us will be back in SF this summer- drop me a line if you want to have a chat.zilchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01695741977946935771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-40152490968884921792007-11-04T09:18:00.000-05:002007-11-04T09:18:00.000-05:00Hello Marlene/fellow members, What a fine book, i ...Hello Marlene/fellow members, <BR/>What a fine book, i was spellbound for the most part.... 'thoroughly enjoyable' & well worth a read.<BR/>The end of The Grand Inquisitor, by Dostoyevsky struck a chord with me: "The tragic grandeur of humanity is the struggle to be free in constant fear of freedon", also B.F.Skinners 'Beyond Freedom & Dignity' sounds quite good....! Great stuff, very commendable indeed!SadEvilTanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15524446081916598786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-77247786412963499972007-11-04T07:00:00.000-05:002007-11-04T07:00:00.000-05:00"Drugs and occult and sex, oh my!"Marlene, you wri...<I>"Drugs and occult and sex, oh my!"</I><BR/><BR/>Marlene, you write well. I could feel for you every step of the way. I was converted during the Jesus Movement so that rang a bell with me as well.<BR/><BR/>Thanks so much for sharing. To people who visit here at DC and claim we don't know what it's like on the other side of the fence, your story amply shows otherwise.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-82012726758383243242007-11-04T02:56:00.000-05:002007-11-04T02:56:00.000-05:00Excellent, Marlene! Your cautious intellectual app...Excellent, Marlene! Your cautious intellectual approach and systematic mindset were very apparent (and yes, that's a compliment all the way, my dear!).<BR/><BR/>(JH)Joe E. Holmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10273702675019012966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-28564230368207854702007-11-04T01:06:00.000-05:002007-11-04T01:06:00.000-05:00Marlene, That was beautifully written.I am left wa...Marlene, <BR/>That was beautifully written.<BR/><BR/>I am left wanting to ask you if you ever meet healthy religious people?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-60808014081992787752007-11-03T22:37:00.000-04:002007-11-03T22:37:00.000-04:00Wow...I just had this book recommended to me a cou...Wow...I just had this book recommended to me a couple weeks ago. After reading this...I'm going to get it. Thanks for sharing this. You said things so well, that I just can't put into words.Vhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04779629094991970187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-54001754942778958822007-11-03T15:05:00.000-04:002007-11-03T15:05:00.000-04:00Thanks for sharing this excerpt from your terrific...Thanks for sharing this excerpt from your terrific book, 'Leaving the Fold'. Leaving Christianity was very difficult for me, and I had few resources to turn to. Your book really helped ease the pain and understand that I was not alone. I encourage anyone who is leaving Christianity while dragging confused and potentially hurt family and loved ones along for the ride to purchase Marlene's book. It is a real winner!HeIsSailinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09154368305822276669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-45480619340119873292007-11-03T14:28:00.000-04:002007-11-03T14:28:00.000-04:00Thanks, Marlene; your book was one of the first I ...Thanks, Marlene; your book was one of the first I purchased after finding this site and it has been very helpful. Thanks for the update in the epilogue.Stargazerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00677236569524940980noreply@blogger.com