Well mental health issues are known to be real. Magic isn't.
Why are you assuming either I or she was speaking of magic? Explain.
Why must it be either magic, or a mental health issue in your mind? This is my point. There is a block or a bias or a prejudice in there somewhere for you that isn't there for me. Hence my point about logic and rationality is not as all-seeing-all-knowing as some want to believe it to be.
A person being exposed to a religious experience is a better explanation of why they have a similar one than them having a magical and intuitive experience.
And if the data doesn't support that premise, do you then double-down and insist it much be because they cannot be something you aren't aware of that would allow for what I said, that she was neither exposed to tongues-talkers in her experience, nor had any sort of brain dysfunction?
I don't know the person you are referring to, but I know people similar to what you explain and I will seek more likely explanation than those that lack evidence.
What I explained was she had had no exposure to others around here who were tongues talkers, had no experience with it, didn't really understand it when it happened, and was confused by it. That does not sound like someone you are describing who 'finally got the Holy Ghost like all those others in her church', or something like that. They know and understand what that looked like. She didn't.
Furthermore, to argue that because she had pain issues, I think it for her leg or spine, therefore it must be a problem with her brain that caused it? Do you not see how non-scientific that assumption is? What I said is she was practicing meditation for pain managements, which is a common thing people do, and she had that experience. What I also did not mention, in addition to that, at another point she had a full-blown Oneness experience, or a Kensho experience of Awakening.
Are you going to say her Oneness experience, which meditators the world over have is also a result of brain malfunction? If so, would that
everyone had that same brain malfunction!!
Let's note that believers in religious experiences have a motive to tell themselves and others that what they experiences was authentic as believed, that being that they somehow were involved with a God, or divine.
I don't deny any of this. What I deny is you ignored the facts of what I said and try to make what happened to her fit this belief you have, because the only other alternative for you is accepting "magic".
That is what my focus here is about. I'm spelling that out in clear language. It's about your argument not following the data and presuming either she or I are lying about the facts, because it can't be anything other than how you see reality at this point now. Do you assume I'm arguing for a magical solution? I'm certainly not. But I'm not agreeing with you either.
Look at what a very confident and defiant Christian is claiming on this thread, much of it that opposes science and reason, yet even you are challenging his claims.
Sure, but that doesn't have a thing to do with what I am saying. Why are you trying to make what I am saying to fit that? Isn't there another alternative possible in your mind besides "learned behavior" vs. "brain problem"?
I have reason to doubt any claims of religious experiences that are not acknowledged as being rooted in natural mental states.
What are you calling natural mental states? Aren't Satori experiences natural too? Aren't states of religious ecstacy where someone may speak in tongues also natural states as well?
I have been debating religious folks since 1996 and I recognize certain little "foot in the door" statements.
Do you admit to seeing a conspiracy, or some ulterior motives to evangelize when someone speaks of God-experiences to you? Certainly you don't see that with me, do you?
I notice more careful posting by believers in that they are more vague but clearly implying certain things covertly.
My concern is that you discount things because you are afraid they are trying to dupe you into believing as you did before again. That is what I mean by prejudice thwarting reason and logic and 'doing science'. "It can't be true, because I've already concluding that magic-God doesn't exist, and this sounds like it might validate the magic-God if true."
If you weren't implying or suggesting a supernatural cause what is your explanation?
That's the right question! I've been explaining it, but I'll just share this here. First, I want to put this out there, that by no means is this an area I have as great a knowledge in as other areas I talk about. But I do have personal experience with it, along with other meditative experiences, which along with the data out there help me understand and appreciate if for what it is. I don't have a lot invested in my views on this however, but I do feel it's a better explanation that the "learned behavior vs. brain malfunction" options you have offered.
From Wiki on Glossolalia, highlighting in bold what I wish to focus on:
Neuroimaging of brain activity during glossolalia does not show activity in the language areas of the brain.
[70][71] In other words, it may be characterized by a
specific brain activity[72][73] and it
can be a learned behaviour.
[74][72]
A study done by the
American Journal of Human Biology found that speaking in tongues is associated with both a reduction in
circulatory cortisol, and enhancements in alpha-amylase enzyme activity – two common biomarkers of
stress reduction that can be measured in saliva.
[76] Several sociological studies report various
social benefits of engaging in Pentecostal glossolalia,
[77][78] such as an increase in self-confidence.
[78]
As of April 2021, further studies are needed to corroborate the 1980s view of glossolalia with more sensitive measures of outcome, by using the more recent techniques of neuroimaging.
[72][
better source needed]
If you have ever entered into deeper states of mediation, you will find that your breathing patterns change, slowing or even becoming close to imperceptible; you find your heart rate slows, you find your awareness opens and becomes more expansive, you find yourself more connected and feelings of greater wellbeing, and so forth.
A common mediation practice is mantra chanting. It is designed to create these very things by giving the discursive thinking mind something repetitive to do. That constant pattern of repeated words, or counting the beads on a mala, etc, have a calming effect on the body's systems, such as breathing and heart rate. As you enter into deeper states through these, the chanting take on deeper resonating effects in the body, which takes someone deeper, and so forth.
The best description I have heard to date was someone referring to glossolalia as a "jazz mantra". It is exactly that! I have practiced both mantra chanting, such as the Buddhist "Om mani padme hum", or a variety of other mantras. And as an ex-Pentecostal myself, know what the experience of glossilia feels like and the effects it has.
Tongues talking is a relaxed state of prayer, which is for all intents and purposes a meditation. It has the same calming, meditative effects as mantra chanting, just in the form of "free association" as described in the Wiki article above. That's jazz! It's improvisational mantra chanting.
It is true one can "learn" it in the sense of imitation, the way a child imitates speech of adults in "baby talk". Doing that has a calming effect. It focuses the mind on the vibrations of the sounds that resonate the physical body, the throat, the cranium, the chest, and so forth. It can be mimicry, of course, just as the article said it may also be. But it can also be a naturalist response that occurs without exposure to others.
If you doubt that it can just happen on its own without exposure to others, then how did it begin in the first place? How is it you find that practice in other religions, particularly in shamanistic religions? Shamanism is about entering into the these altered or higher states of consciousness. And that's where you may find this happening naturally.
This is not supernatural entities sending magic into people's mouths. But is it "magical" in the sense of the effect is has upon the practitioners. That is why it is a practiced religiously, just like chanting mantras are. It is the meditative effect that it creates.
So what that woman described in her experience, having not had exposure to others who did it, not trying to fit it, not trying to imitate, anything, who in a deeper state of mediation suddenly began doing it, did not in one bit surprise me. It did not threaten me as if she were trying to find an "in" to try to evangelize me.
