Preamble: I strongly believe in the freedom of religion, and every person has a right to believe whatever they want:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Zeus is the sky and thunder god who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus with his sister and wife Hera.
There are many gods and goddesses, either of the Æsir or the Vanir, who fought each other for millennia until they achieved an entente. There also exist jötnar, dwarfs, elves, and land-wights. Our world, Midgard, is one of many that exist on the world tree Yggdrasil that also included worlds of the afterlife.
A god whose personal name is "Yahweh" is the creator of the universe some 6000 years ago and demands blood sacrifices of unblemished lambs to ensure that his priests have an unlimited supply of red meat. That god, while being only the only god, has three different distinct personas, Yahweh himself (a god that has gonads for some reason) who has existed forever, the Son of Yahweh whose name is the Salvation of Yahweh (and yet this son has also existed forever and does not seem to have a mother), and the Spirit of Yahweh whose job it is to bestows gifts on true-believers here on Earth. This god played favorites for 4000 years, 2000 of which he only blessed and communicated with one particular tribe in the Levant, and then sent himself to be sacrificed to himself by being hung on a tree--something that he himself said would cause that person to be cursed--so that he could send himself to bestow gifts to those true-believers, and all who believe that Yahweh is indeed god and the Salvation of Yahweh died for you will go to heaven, while 100 people each and every minute die and go to a pit of fire forever to be tormented by an angel that Yahweh created knowing this angel world torment billions of humans forever.
The world is flat.
We did not land on the Moon in 1969.
The COVID vaccines do not work.

However, this right does not allow you to interfere and harm the lives of others. The Christian scriptures explicitly state that

life begins when an infant takes its first breath (the breath of life) and ends when a person exhales the last breath;
causing an abortion is nothing more than a property crime against the father resulting in nothing more than a fine to be paid; and
if a woman is suspected of becoming pregnant by anyone other than her husband, she should be forced to drink a concoction that, if she was indeed unfaithful, would cause an abortion of that fetus.

Never-the-less, those same individuals believe it is their right to prevent women from seeking medical interventions to protect their health and life. Carrying a child to term

can be life-terminating or have health-altering consequences that may affect one's entire life, and
can, when one is not yet ready to start parenthood, have significant negative mental health and other real-world serious consequences on both the parents and the child.

You have a right to believe what you believe, but you do not have the right to adversely affect the lives of others, and you most certainly do not have the right to be protected from criticism. Thus, until the time comes that true-believers stop literally harming others, let us look at the collection of texts that many true-believers believe and claim, without evidence, is the sole infallible source of authority for all humans on this planet.

The gospels mention speaking in tongues and today, we find absolutely absurd examples as can be seen here. This is the practice of Pentecostal churches, as well as its derivatives, the charismatic and neo-charismatic churches. Apparently, half a billion people in the world belong to a such churches, so that is approximately one in sixteen humans. Someone stands and combines various syllables that produce language-like constructs, but with no coherence or substance, while someone else may "interpret" this excited speech, or babble. When analyzed, there does not appear to be any structure, and the speaker, in general, follows the same rules as the native languages that person already speaks. Never-the-less, this is claimed by these churches to be demonstrations of the Spirit of Yahweh showering its gifts on the believers. Where does this belief come from? We can start with Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12:

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and
to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit,
to another faith by the same Spirit,
to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,
to another the working of powerful deeds,
to another prophecy,
to another the discernment of spirits,
to another various kinds of tongues,
to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Now, Paul then enumerates:

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church

first apostles,
second prophets,
third teachers,
then deeds of power,
then gifts of healing,
forms of assistance,
forms of leadership,
various kinds of tongues.

Next, Paul queries:

Are all apostles?
Are all prophets?
Are all teachers?
Do all work powerful deeds?
Do all possess gifts of healing?
Do all speak in tongues?
Do all interpret?

But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Next, Paul states:

Love is patient;
love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable;
it keeps no record of wrongs;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing
but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.

Paul concludes:

Love never ends.

But as for prophecies, they will come to an end;
as for tongues, they will cease;
as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

Why?

For we know only in part, and
we prophesy only in part,

but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

A discussion on angelic tongues

One possible justification for the babble that occurs in Pentecostal and charismatic churches is the line “If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels.” Perhaps we are all mistaken: perhaps all these people babbling are actually people speaking not a human language, but in the “tongues...of angels.” Of course, if that is what I'm going to hear in heaven, I'll gladly join Lucifer in hell; however, on reflection, Lucifer, too, is an angel. However, this brings up another issue: human languages exist simply because we are causing vibrations with our vocal cords. Vocal cords can only form very specific combinations of frequencies, and are consequently quite limited, but never-the-less, some humans have trained their vocal cords to produce absolutely amazing sounds. Never-the-less, the range of sounds is very much restricted based on the shape, composition, rigidity, etc., of some components of the throat made of proteins. However, are we supposed to believe that angels have the same limitations of humans? Is there air in heaven, and is that passing of air over vibrating organs occur in angels, and is this the only manner in which angels can produce sounds? If so, are angels mute in outer space? We breath because we require oxygen. Do angels breath to live or they only breath to speak? Of course, for angels to communicate with humans, they must somehow recreate the vibrations that are intelligible to our ears; however, do they also communicate with each other in the same manner? Are angels made of proteins derived from sugars and acids, in which case, how do they fly? (Indeed, the wings of birds are evolutionary adaptations of arms, and yet angels have both arms and wings, so did angels have four arms?) To speak with humans, do they use such vocal cords, or do they have voice synthesizers? After all, for example, Gabriel spoke to Mary.

Also, what do two angels discuss when they get together? We discuss the weather, because weather has the potential to either bring pleasure or pain, we discuss events as they interest us for the same reason, they bring us, or others, pleasure or pain. However, what would Michael and Gabriel discuss, especially after a few million years together? "Gabriel, how's the weather?" Michael replies, "No different form a million years ago, still as hot as seven suns so we still haven't had any rain to cool down...and humans are complaining about global warming."

Additionally, does the language of angels evolve over time? Human languages evolve over time for various reasons:

new ideas and technologies require new words to describe them,
cultures meet and exchange, and words from one culture cross into the other,
the need to distinguish an in group from an out group,

and many more. Indeed, there is an entire field of study, way beyond the understanding of this author, regarding linguistics, a component of which focuses on language change. Under the assumption that angels were created before the universe, if angels have been speaking for the last 13.787 billion years, would they continue to modify their languages? Did Yahweh not give the angels a language that would have been perfect when they were created? Would there ever be pressures on angels to change their language, to introduce new words and sounds, and to discard others that are no longer relevant? If Yahweh had, indeed, created the angels and given them a language, one would expect such a language to be unchanging. Thus, if humans were to speak on the tongue of angels, then the sounds and combinations thereof made two thousand years ago would be the same sounds and combinations thereof that we hear today. One could record and study these sounds and combinations thereof, and discern specific translations, and thus, over two thousand years of babbling, one would expect it to be possible to deduce the actual language of the angels. Additionally, do angels have accents? Do different angels inflect their words differently? While Russian and Ukrainian use the same alphabet, the word разведка is pronounced in Russia as rawz-vyed-ka, while in Ukraine, rose-veed-ka.

However, the babble that goes on in Pentecostal and charismatic churches does not stay constant: they are constant in neither space nor time. Go to any two such churches in the world, and the sounds and rules followed by the babblers generally follow the sounds and rules of the native language, not some common angelic tongue. Combinations of sounds made in Arabic (the sounds transliterated as kh (a guttural 'h') and gh (a trilled 'g')) generally do not appear in North American churches, and neither does the German 'ch' (a stressed 'h').

Now, science is the study of the understanding of the world: science slowly, but surely, tends to converge. New ideas are introduced, but sometimes those ideas are accepted, and other times, they are rejected, and an idea that was at one time accepted, but now shown to be false, ends up being rejected and relegated to the books on the history of science. If babblers were indeed speaking in the tongue of angels, one would expect convergence, and not divergence. The individual speaker may not have the correct intonation, inflection or accent, or an incorrect syllable, vowel-sound or consonant, but over time, as those given the "gift of tongues" continue to speak and hear each other, one would expect convergence on a single language. With such convergence, one could then record and study that language. However, as indicated above, the babbling that goes on in North America is different from that going on in Asia. Speakers of tonal languages will include more such characteristics in their babble than in the video above. Do angelic languages use tone? To be able to say four different words with the same syllable but with different tones would certainly make a language much more compact, and why restrict a language to only four or five tones? With five tones per syllable, and one hundred consonants and thirty vowels, then using just syllables of consonant-vowel-consonant, vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel, we could produce a very compact language with 15 million words of just one syllable. Perhaps that is the issue: angels speak in a monosyllabic language but allow for all combinations of vowels and consonants to for such syllables. Perhaps we simply cannot discern the differences between these simple monosyllabic words. Unfortunately, this does not help the situation: the babble spoken throughout the world is very different, and that babble changes over time: the babble of fifty years ago is not the same babble of today. Did angels change their language so significantly in the last half century? Do angels change their language as quickly as the babble that is heard in Pentecostal churches? Do angels actually have different languages to speak? I have not seen any responses to such questions anywhere on the web: perhaps someone is aware of a paper or apology that addresses these issues.

As a humorous aside, there is exactly one place that this author is aware of where the voice of Yahweh is explicitly described in Job 37:2-5:

Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice
and the rumbling that comes from his mouth.
Under the whole heaven he lets it loose,
and his lightning to the corners of the earth.
After it his voice roars;
he thunders with his majestic voice,
and he does not restrain the lightnings[a] when his voice is heard.
God thunders wondrously with his voice;
he does great things that we cannot comprehend.

This author has never once heard anyone speaking in tongues attempting to recreate this voice.

Thus, we will instead focus on such babble in the Christian scriptures: We will contrast two views of speaking in tongues: that recorded in the book of Acts, and that described by Paul in a letter to one of his congregations.

A contrast: the author of Luke and Acts versus Paul

We will now take a look at two very different interpretations to speaking in tongues. We will start by looking at Acts, a book written well over half a century after the execution of Jesus by the same author who wrote the gospel of Luke. With this interpretation in mind, we will then look at how Paul continues in his first letter to the Corinthians, a letter that was written only twenty years after the execution of Jesus; three decades before the author of Luke and Acts began to put quill to parchment.

Before we begin, however, it's useful to understand the difference between the two books: the author of Luke and Acts was attempting to record a history of Jesus and his earliest followers. This is a series of two books meant to present that history to both believers, to potential converts and to the world at large. Thus, the author's intention is to portray early Christianity in as positive a light as possible. Paul, however, was writing a personal letter to one of his congregations, a congregation that appears, as we will see, to have gone tongue-crazy, however, not in the way that the author of Luke describes the speaking of tongues.

Speaking in tongues in Acts

In Acts, written by the same author as who wrote Luke, the author go into details about speaking in tongues:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?

Parthians,
Medes,
Elamites, and
residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea and
Cappadocia,
Pontus and
Asia,
Phrygia and
Pamphylia,
Egypt and
the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and
visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and
Arabs—

in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Given that Jesus was called a drunkard, it is not unlikely that those followers, too, were potentially inebriated. However, this is the clearest indication of what it means to be speaking in tongues, at least according to the author of Luke and Acts: you are speaking in another human language that you apparently do not know, and yet, you can speak it such that native speakers can understand it. The purpose is also clear: to transmit the message of the gospel. Please review this video, and ask yourself if there is any human on the face of the planet that can understand this rubbish? Indeed, it would be humorous to have two individuals who claim to understand this rubbish to actually come up with the same translation into a human language.

Later in Acts, again, it refers to speaking in tongues, but now whether or not this is another language or babble is less clear:

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

Speaking in tongues is referred to one more time: when it is time to demonstrate that disciples of John the Baptist were being converted to disciples of Jesus. Again, one of the difficulties with the early followers of Jesus was that if John the Baptist was indeed the herald of Jesus, why were there still disciples of John the Baptist decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus? Each of the gospels attempts to resolve this by either clearly subordinating John the Baptist to Jesus:

The author of Matthew has John the Baptist refuse to baptize Jesus,
The author of Luke has John the Baptist a reasonably close relative of Jesus, with visitations from angels announcing the births of John the Baptist and Jesus to Zechariah and Mary, respectively.
The author of John has Andrew (and likely Simon, as well as possibly Philip and Nathanael) being a disciple of John, and explicitly becoming a follower of Jues the day after Jesus's baptism.

The author of Luke and Acts, however also includes another story about how Paul was able to convince followers of John to follow Jesus; however, as always, when someone has something prophetic to say like Simeon at the Temple at Jesus's presentation, the authors are able to record verbatim what was said, but what actually convinced the followers of John the Baptist, apart from one rather basic unsubstantiated claim, is left out:

Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples [of John the Baptist].

He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?”

They replied, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

Then he said, “Into what, then, were you baptized?”

They answered, “Into John’s baptism.”

Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.”

On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied, altogether there were about twelve of them.

The emphasis here is that these were disciples of John the Baptist, and although John the Baptist was a close relative of Jesus, and John the Baptist was explicitly told that by Yahweh that he would recognize Jesus as who he was because the Spirit of Yahweh would come down upon him during his baptism, and he then later that day declared that Jesus was the “Chosen One”, that John the Baptist was explicitly told about the Spirit of Yahweh, and that after talking to Andrew, his disciple, Andrew became a disciple of Jesus, instead, but never-the-less, so many other disciples had never heard of the Spirit of Yahweh, but then they become followers of Jesus and immediately they start speaking in tongues, the sign of a gift of the Spirit of Yahweh, and thus an indication that they are indeed true believers in and followers of Jesus. However, as with the second reference in Acts, it does not indicate whether or not this is speaking in a human or an "angelic" language.

Thus, while the book of Acts clearly begins by describes the speaking in tongues as speaking in a human languages that were originally unknown to the speaker, and if this was the only and true history of the early followers of Jesus, then one would have to assume that followers of Jesus miraculously were able to speak second and third languages; just like all the humans who were building the Tower of Babel were speaking the same language one minute, and then the next, they were speaking a completely different language the next. The contrast, however, is that while those at the Tower of Babel had forgotten their original language and were no longer able to communicate with others who were given different languages, in theory, at least, those early Aramaic speaking followers of Jesus, now able to speak in:

the Iranian Parthian language,
the Iranian Median language,
a variant of Aramaic spoken in Elymais,
however, the lingua franca of the residents of Mesopotamia was also Aramaic, so no need for speaking in tongues,
similarly, the langue of Judea was also Aramaic, so again, no need for speaking in tongues,
the Hellenic Koine Greek language,
the Armenian language,
one or more of many other languages spoken in Anatolia,
possibly a Phrygian dialect of Greek,
possibly a Pamphylian dialect of Greek,
the Egyptian Coptic language,
possibly a Therian dialect of Greek spoken in Cyrene,
the Italic Latin language,
possibly a Cretan dialect of Greek, and
the Semitic Arabian language.

The author of Acts does not appear to realize that many of these people would almost certainly have spoken Koine Greek, but it seems that not only were the followers of Jesus able to speak Koine Greek, but they were able to master the various dialects. Why the author mentions a language that was extinct at the time, the Elamite language, is beyond me.

Speaking in tongues by Paul

Paul rescues the Pentecostal's babbling later in 1 Corinthians, but he starts be subordinating speaking in tongues to prophesizing. He begins by emphasizing prophesy, but then proceeds to contrast prophesy and speaking in tongues:

Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy.

For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God, for no one understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit.

But those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.

Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but

those who prophesy build up the church.

Here Paul seems to discuss the babble that comes from most who speak in tongues: they are speaking to Yahweh, not to other humans. Thus, this is a language known only to Yahweh. Paul continues to contrast speaking in tongues and prophesy:

Now I would like all of you to speak in tongues but even more to prophesy.

One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

Paul next explains how speaking in tongues is useless (of no benefit) unless it includes some tangible benefit:

Now, brothers and sisters, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I speak to you in some

revelation or
knowledge or
prophecy or
teaching?

Without these benefits, Paul contrasts speaking in tongues with lifeless instruments:

It is the same way with lifeless instruments that produce sound, such as the flute or the harp. If they do not give distinct notes, how will what is being played on the flute or harp be recognized?

And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?

He continues:

So with yourselves: If in a tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is being said? For you will be speaking into the air.

There are doubtless many different kinds of sounds in the world, and nothing is without sound.

If then I do not know the meaning of a sound, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.

So with yourselves: since you are striving after spiritual gifts, seek to excel in them for building up the church.

This is like the video: the pastor speaks in a tongue no one can understand: who does this benefit? The pastor might as well speak Polabian. However, Paul offers a solution:

Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray for the power to interpret.

So, if you are speaking in a tongue you don't understand, pray that you can interpret it, or that someone else can interpret it...

Next, Paul explains the difference between praying and praying in a tongue: he indicates that your mind is doing nothing, but then offers a solution:

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive.

What should I do then?

I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also; I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also.

Otherwise, if you say a blessing with the spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say the “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since the outsider does not know what you are saying? For you may give thanks well enough, but the other person is not built up.

Paul is belaboring the point that speaking in tongues by itself does not benefit the congregation.

Now Paul brags about how he can speak in tongues, too, and he sees the value, or the lack thereof, of this practice:

I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you; nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue.

This is a ratio of one to two thousand. Recall that of the gifts, Paul put speaking in tongues almost at the very bottom, and this only reemphasizes that point: its almost as if he knows that it is make-believe, for if a worshipper was actually speaking in, say, Uzbek or Tongan. I would be greatly impressed if anyone who did not know either of these languages could step up in front of a church and begin speaking in such a language, and it would be preferable if the person speaking Uzbek, but preferably in the dialect spoken in Mazar-i-Sharif.

However, here Paul also essentially states that it isn't actually a gift from the Spirit of Yahweh, but rather, it is a performance or an act, as Paul says “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.” That is, he is the one who is speaking, and not the Spirit of Yahweh who is speaking through him. Additionally, Paul is explicitly equating his speaking in tongues with that of the congregation: he isn't able to speak in foreign languages, all he can do is what the congregation does: babble. One wishes Paul had bragged about being able to speak Chinese or Aquitanian, a language that most speakers in the eastern Mediterranean would be completely unaware of, and yet, Paul, being able to speak in those tongues, would have known the names of those languages, too. But no, Paul simply is boasting that he can babble better than the best babblers in Corinth.

The next sets up the context of quieting those who are speaking tongues at the worship services:

Brothers and sisters,

do not be children in your thinking;

rather, be infants in evil,

but in thinking be adults.

In the law it is written,

“By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, yet even then they will not listen to me,” says the Lord.

When trying to admonish those disrupting a worship service, it is aways good to refer to an ancient text. This is a reference to a verse in Isaiah:

Truly, with stammering lip and with another tongue
he will speak to this people, to whom he has said,

“This is rest; give rest to the weary, and this is repose,”

yet they would not hear.

Paul next contrasts speaking in tongues and prophesy, and it seems that speaking in tongues is explicitly meant to be a sign to unbelievers, while prophesies are for believers, again, emphasizing the relative value of the two gifts of the Spirit of Yahweh:

Tongues, then, are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers,

while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers.

Paul now raises a completely valid point:

If, therefore, the entire church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind?

This parallels the statement made in the book of Acts:

But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

This demonstrates, in a sense, that even Paul thinks that this is all make-believe acting, for if the Spirit of Yahweh was actually entering into the entire congregation, and having them all speak in tongues, would that not be the will of Yahweh? After all, to be able to speak in the tongue of an angel, would that not be a miracle, and would not the world be amazed if the entire congregation was speaking such a language? However, Paul does not acknowledge such a possibility and recognizes speaking in tongues exactly what it is: people in the congregation putting on a performance and seeking attention.

This is awkward, however, for just above, Paul says that "prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers", but this next statement says if the entire congregation prophesy, reprove the unbeliever and call the unbeliever to account, then that person will possibly become a believer, too:

But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all and called to account by all. After the secrets of the unbeliever’s heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship, declaring, “God is really among you.”

Next, Paul gives instructions for how to engage in worship:

What should be done then, my brothers and sisters?

When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.

Let all things be done for building up.

Next, Paul instructs how to integrate speaking at tongues into a worship service:

If anyone speaks in a tongue,

let there be only two or at most three and each in turn, and let one interpret.

Thus, Paul says that the worshipers should speak separately, and thus advising against the entire congregation speaking in tongues simultaneously. This is one of the many issue that Paul was addressing with his congregation in Corinth in this letter.

Paul also offers a solution to prevent those who would want to show off their skills at speaking gibberish, and that is to simply have no one else in the congregation offer to interpret:

But if there is no one to interpret,

let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God.

The balance has to do with prophesy, which is not the topic of this essay:

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.

If someone sitting receives a revelation,

let the first person be silent.

For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged (and the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace), as in all the churches of the saints.

It seems that the congregation at Corinth was filled with lots of individuals who were primarily interested in filling up the halls with their voice speaking in tongues, and Paul is seeking to quiet these individuals without discrediting the entire practice of speaking in tongues; instead, he relegates speaking in tongues to among the least of the gifts of the Spirit of Yahweh, and then gives strict instructions for how speaking in tongues should be done, and even allows one who is receiving a revelation or prophesy to preempt one who is speaking in a tongue.

In summary, the author of Luke and Acts has a very different take on speaking in tongues, where that author explicitly describes speaking in tongues as speaking other languages, and specifically, languages that the listener knows, not just some random language. That author makes no reference to the babble that is heard today in Pentecostal churches nor does the author refer to angelic languages being spoken by believers: when a believer speaks in a tongue, it is to witness to one who does not speak the same language as the believer. Paul, on the other hand, is dealing with an unruly congregation in Corinth, where it seems that the entire community, or a large part thereof, are all speaking in tongues simultaneously, and Paul observes what everyone else would observe: if the entire church comes together and all speak in tongues, outsiders will say that you are out of your mind? There is no suggestion that anyone in the congregation is speaking in any intelligible human language, and is simply an earlier version of the babbling that is seen today.

The science

This is nicely summarized on the Wikipedia page, but it should be obvious: each speaker generally only uses syllables that appear in the person's own language. If this were some sort of angelic language, one would think that all persons speaking it would be, through the gift of the Spirit of Yahweh, be able to make sounds they've never heard before.

What would be wonderful is if we could even determine one common word in the babble that is heard throughout the world: it is reasonable to assume that there is only one divine angelic language (or at least, one language spoken in Heaven--there may very well be a different language spoken in Hell), so what is the angelic name for Yahweh? The angelic language most clearly is not Hebrew, for none of the babble that is spoken sounds in any way like even a Semitic language, let alone Hebrew or Aramaic. Are there nouns and verbs in this angelic language? What is the sentence structure?

Babble

Is it fair to call speaking in tongues babble? Recall that the word babble parallels the Hebrew cognate b-b-l (בבל) or b-v-l (בָּבֶל) meaning confusion; however, the Hebrew word was used in the familiar story of the Tower of Babel, the place where Yahweh confused the languages of the world. It is also used to describe Babylon, a derogatory term, as Babylon comes from Babilim, meaning gate of the gods (you can contrast this with Bab Elohim where Bab is even today the Arabic word for gate (c.f. Bab) and Elohim is the transliteration of the plural of the name El), but "Babel" means confusion. Also, returning to English, the word "babble" is defined as to

talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish, excited, or incomprehensible way.

In the context of this document, definition being used has it meaning "to talk rapidly and continuously in an excited way."

Origins

Christianity is derived from Judaism, and yet any concept of speaking in tongues is entirely absent from Judaism. Where did this come from? First, there are no gospels written in Aramaic, they were all written in Greek, for most early Christian communities were in Greek cities. Greek followers of Judean worship fell into one of two categories: those that took the full path to Judaism, including circumcision, and those who participated, but did not take this final step--and for obvious reasons. Now, the followers of Jesus offered an alternative: all the historical aspects of Judaism, but without the ultimate requirement, something that apparently many flocked to. This, perhaps more than any other reason, and perhaps also the right to eat bacon and shrimp, caused the earliest numbers of this branch of Judaism to flourish, and also benefit with all the associated donations. All the earliest gospels were written, although at least 40 years after Jesus's execution, in Greek. The stories told in Acts may have been invented either to originate the earliest conversions back to the disciples, or perhaps to given a strong tie back to the original Judean religion, but it was not Aramaic-speaking followers of an Aramaic-speaking preacher (one who was an itinerant, though charismatic, apocalyptic preacher who had himself anointed and subsequently who executed) who first spread this idea, but rather Paul and his Greek-speaking followers. There are older accounts of such forms of speech, and perhaps one early convert introduced this to his community, and from there it spread. After all, it was 40 years between the execution of Jesus and the authoring of the first gospel, and even more before the authoring of the gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Paul, as noted above, also engaged in this practice, and he appears to have also explicitly babbled, rather than having spoken in a recognized foreign tongue.

Apologies

The babble that is associated with speaking in tongues today was quickly sidelined from mainstream Christianity, and most apologies explain why speaking in tongues is no longer a gift of the Spirit of Yahweh today. Certainly, it seems that the last time anyone spoke a language other than any language that the speaker knew was immediately following the Pentecost. I'll look at a few things about this later... One example, though, of an apology, is from Thomas Aquinas, who justified the absence of any Christian at his time to be able to speak languages not known to that speaker, as being that "no one speaks in the tongues of all nations, because the Church herself already speaks the languages of all nations."