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From: jejones@ea.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Re: Jones on Sargent on speaking in
Message-ID: <22200006@ea.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Nov-84 15:28:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ea.22200006
Posted: Mon Nov 19 15:28:00 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 22-Nov-84 05:23:38 EST
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Nf-From: ea!jejones    Nov 19 14:28:00 1984

Just as showing how one can bend spoons surreptitiously doesn't *prove*
that Uri Geller does it that way, I admit that the items I cited don't
*prove* that "speaking in tongues" doesn't occur. However, in the absence
of well-documented, controlled tests, I make the same conclusion about
both alleged events, namely that they are not worth bothering with.
(I'm glad that Mr. Rosen doesn't actually own Occam's Razors, Ltd....think
of the royalties! :->) I hope that this attempt at optimizing the payoff
of one's mental labors is not considered closed-mindedness.

Of course, glossolalia isn't purely random--I'd bet it would come
fairly close to the performance of a third or fourth order <native
language of speaker> phoneme monkey. (This implies that I'd be
particulay impressed if you could cite evidence of a verified
monolingual English speaker heard to speak fluent Xhosa, clicks and
all, under the alleged influence of God.) Actually, it might be better,
since the human will probably repeat some pseudo-words. Hasn't someone
already done studies of this sort?

						James Jones