It's not even Halloween yet

You keep laughing at them but they're breeding in far greater numbers than you. Give it 18 years and see what happens at the ballot box and SCOTUS. Even today there are places where free thinkers tread carefully.

Also, if you all are so smarter and the intellectual elite amongst the savages, why aren't you in charge?

Makes me glad that knowledge is Lamarkian. Otherwise, "I am so wise" would frighten me.

My Mom's family weren't church-goers, but as a teen she tagged along with one of her aunts who attended a real fire-and-brimstone holy-roller pentecostal church. Her motivation was the preacher's very attractive son. Her aunt's motivation was one-upping her sister (my Granny). As it turned out, the experience drove out any future desire to experiment with religion on my mom's part. But while she was attending, she did speak in tongues, because everyone else was doing it. Anyway, the glossophalia videos reminded me of this story and how easy it is to learn to speak in tongues.

Truly disturbing. Those videos contain some of the most horrific child abuse I have ever seen.

Suffer the little children indeed.

The scariest part isn't the adults taking part, it's the fact that children are being indoctrinated into this nonsense.

Also, if you all are so smarter and the intellectual elite amongst the savages, why aren't you in charge?

If stupid people outbreed smart people in a unbiased democracy, we are destined to become an Idiocracy. No question about it. Evidence: George W. Bush. Over the long term though, nature will correct. She always does, and she's a bitch.

hock-a-ma-la-la-tho! lada lada mmmeee maw sthingj kujer!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Srsly.

In the last clip in that collection, there's a kid sitting in the front row who ends up sitting by himself as everyone else starts hopping about and rolling on the floor. I wonder what that poor boy was thinking. (Probably counting the number of years till he's 18 and out of there.)

Speaking of kids, children are the pitch for Ken Ham's latest fundraiser. He needs money to protect the youngsters from ... Darwin Day! I posted his letter (sprinkled with snark) here.

Beats the heck out of taking up snakes.

I learned how to speak in tongues back in college when I was interested in anthropology--I also learned how to do a full-blown shaman's trance complete with a journey to the Land of the Dead. Performance art.

Hey, wise one, go shake your dick and mumble to your invisible sky fairy. See what that gets you.

"Hey, wise one, go shake your dick and mumble to your invisible sky fairy. See what that gets you."

waldteufel,

with an attitude like that you'll never secure a quality mate to help reduce the breeding advantage those people in the video have over you and your kind.

And, just to teach you a lesson and provide you with some much needed corrective discipline within Christ
s paradigm- I am going to do a write-in for Sarah Palin for president.

PZ, where's your open thread this weekend? Off-topic, here's a reminder for everyone: don't sit at your computer day and night. Get out and walk, stretch, bike, run, swim, play tennis, walk the dog, play with the kids. Start with about half an hour a day and work up 10% a week. Yet another web personality, Mark Hoekstra of Geek Techniques, died suddenly of a heart attack at age 34. Verbum sapientes: a word to the wise [is sufficient].

@ 12,

//Get out and walk, stretch, bike, run, swim, play tennis, walk the dog, play with the kids//

I agree.
An hour on the net after getting up,an hour or seven before bed,and an activity-filled day in between is how I do it.

As to those vids,I watched a little,but I just cant stomach this for too long.Those kids should be removed from whoever brings them along to this shit,its abuse.
Whats much more interesting is the group psychology and dynamics at work there,theyre obviously all pretending,but WTF is the point??

Im so glad Bill Maher showed the Palin witchdoctor vid in his show on Friday,it needs to be shown more often.

When I was about twelve or thirteen, I went with a friend to a pentecostal church that her family attended. During the service, people started to convulse, chanting and speaking in gibberish.

I come from a large family (I am the eldest of eight children.) and let's just say, it was rarely calm and quiet at home. Yet the sight of all these people losing control like this scared me. I could handle loud, argumentative and hyperactive kids; I was the loudest and biggest of the lot. But seeing adults starting to act less mature then my toddler siblings left it's mark on me.

It would be about three more years before I left my god belief behind, watching glossolalia in action was but one more reason why. I wonder how many other people left their belief behind for simular reasons.

But I can see why some people engage in this behavior. It is a way to temporarily leave behind their stressful life for a few moments, believing that their big sky daddy is taking away their responsibilities.

It's like watching a train wreck in slow-motion.

So, let's say some convincing video of Palin acting like that ever did surface. Would it seriously affect McCain's electability? Even if he kept her on the ticket, I doubt it. The liberal/conservative divide is too strong, and after all, "it's just her beliefs."

But I am perhaps being very cynical. Thoughts?

Feh, don't see what the big deal is. I can fake language-like speech way better than they can, that guy with the microphone sounds like he's never spoken a word of english and just watched Temple of Doom way too much.

"KALI-MA! KALI-MA!"

Uh, that should say "spoken a word of anything other than english," my bad.

Speaking in tongues was a regular feature of the Goon Show: "Plithy plong plong, ta-ti-ti-too-ti-tooey, omnivorous plethora!"

Wow. That was some terrible fake language. Note to pentacostals: most natural languages have more than two phonemes in them.

I remember "speaking in tongues" for an acting exercise in a drama class. You act out a scene/theme/emotion/whatever in a made-up language. I'm pretty sure most of the class did a better job than these dorks.

For my money, only Milla Jovovich can speak the Divine Language.

'The Fifth Element' - great movie!

Big Bada Boom!

The wording in those two poll questions is a bugger for me.

I still associate the word 'miracle' with "Triumph over unfavourable odds" over "Intervention by a diety."

I'll have to read the article and find out what their gist is.

Off topic - Rolling Stone has an article up about McCain entitled Make-Believe Maverick.

It's a long and sobering read.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/pr…

I'm not one to visibly label myself with anything, but if that Palin bitch gets in this November, I'm buying a Scarlet A pin and wearing it proudly next time I cross the border to the south... that is, if I don't flee the continent first...

And I'd publically anounce myself as a sworn enemy of the American theocracy. If this really gets bad, my academic career might have to wait... for one cannot do scientific research in a theocratic environment! Or even live sanely, for that matter.

I'm scared. Any particular reason Halloween and US elections are 4 days apart?

(Any particular reason the Canadian gov't calls an election a week before the US one, knowing the whole country will be too damn distracted to care?)

I may be ignorant and self contradictory, but at least I'm not as nuts as those vids show. I respect, this is so going to sound wrong, intelligent religious belief. I have known in my life, many religious people. Most of them have been rational, but deluded; open to reason, outside of their delusion. That made no sense, see below.

I had other thoughts on this subject, but the Ignorant Atheist is an alcoholic and ignorant. And ignorant and drunk, I'm still not as stupid as these pentecostals.

/drunken ramble

"For my money, only Milla Jovovich can speak the Divine Language."

MOOLTI-PASS!

Watching the first of the Glossolalia vids put me in mind of a recent case in the UK, where a devout Shia Muslim was convicted of child cruelty for forcing his children to flog themselves with a whip.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7584446.stm

To my mind the clear mental abuse and cruelty demonstrated by the adults involved in this video is at least as bad and sickening. Everyone should petition YouTube to get rid of it as originally happened to Pat Condell's latest offering, though they have thankfully reinstated the latter.

I skipped the videos. I've been dragged to Pentecostal services many times while I lived in Kentucky. For a lapsed Presbyterian turned Quaker turned atheist, the entire experience each time was -- to say the least -- uncomfortable. Under "normal" circumstances, having someone drop to the floor and start twitching uncontrollably would induce most sane people to call an ambulance. For a Pentecostal, it's the Lord acting on you. (Though, 400 years ago, it might have got you burned at the stake.) I've heard enough preachers "speaking in tongues" that I am convinced they all take "Speaking in Tongues 101" in preacher college. They all sound alike.

As for the kids, some recover, leave the church and become disillusioned, relatively sane people. The rest grow up, become insufferably pious, and either become preachers or run for governor of Alaska.

But when it is Halloween, they're sometimes more scary. We do a big set-up with friends every year, but Halloween has fallen on a "church night" the last couple of years, and that's killed the trick-or-treat turnout. Before that, we actually got a bunch of church kids coming around singing hymns at us. They got extra candy for being the most terrifying things we'd seen that evening.

I wondered why there were so many votes in my poll this week --- I've been running an atheist diary series at DailyKos for 9 weeks but only this one really got any attention.

Then it hit me: I bet PZ posted a link.

Turns out that he did.

Thanks, PZ.

Have you noticed that you only see this in groups? There is a terrible pressure to conform, which some call "love bombing". If you don't say the silly things and put on your cum-face, then you aren't part of the herd...

This little diddy should cheer you all up!

http://tinyurl.com/6hf8xj

The question:

Any particular reason the Canadian gov't calls an election a week before the US one

The answer:

knowing the whole country will be too damn distracted to care