Why do Christians believe praying is "true" but talking in tongues is "false?"?

Well, The Lord of Dreams, let me first say you are generalizing, not all feel that way:

FYI, the Gift of Tongues was given to uneducated people so they could spread the Gospel throughout the world; and Acts chapter 2 mentions about nine different language groups who heard the disciples speak in their own language.

But let me add, that within a hundred years of Christ's crucixion, there was a false tongues that appeared.

It was called Montainism and the people spoke in gibberish that no one could understand while laughing and rolling in the spirit.

A strange spirit overcame these people and some committed the most gross sins while claiming to be saved.

And they were disfellowshipped from the Church International (not Roman CC). One sect of this group is mentioned in Revelation whose offering God detested. Revelation 2:15

"So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate."

According to the fourth century historian, Eusebius, that group claimed to be saved but made their wives sleep with other men."

By their fruits you will know them, not by alleged tongues.

Additionally, the Bible code proves Jesus is the Messiah: http://abiblecode.com/

Blessings, Ben Yeshua

St. Paul said that if people are going to speak in tongues in church that there should be someone to interpret it. The events at Pentecost were not ramblings of the mind, but actually foreign languages that each person present understood, "each in their own language". St. Paul also says that this practice is the least of the gifts.

The problem is that in a Charismatic group, members of the group engage in what appears to be more of a mass hysteria than something from God. They are expected to speak in tongues and this together with the need to fit in causes most people to just start letting their mind go into a sort of free association of part of words.

There have been studies about this sort of thing and compared to serious meditation. There is not another actual language being used but parts of the speaker's own language. If it were truly the language of the angels it would all sound the same, and it doesn't.

The other problem is pride. It seems to me that people that engage in this practice act as if it were a special gift from God and it makes them "special". They then develop this mindset that others are not "special", that God loves them more, and in the extreme they accuse other Christians of not being "real Christians". Does that sound like something from God to you? I am not saying that it is from the Devil. It is just the person's imagination gone wild, as I said, in a mass hysteria.

I didn't read all the answers, so my apologies if I repeat.

As a "Charismatic" Christian, I describe the "non-Charismatic" viewpoint you state above not as "false", but as incomplete.

If you are open to the leading of God's Holy Spirit, you will praise Him, pray, and worship as He desires you to. Sometimes that involves speaking in tongues, sometimes it's lifting your hands, sometimes it's dancing, sometimes it's all or none of the above.

To limit what you are willing to do to honor Him and to misinterpret scriptures to meet your unwillingness is the false teaching.

Talking in tongues was when god gave preachers the gift to speak the bible in any language of the human race so as to help convert all people of the world, its is generally considered to be redundant today as the bible is in nearly every language.

A lot of christians consider the modern " blajsfodjfd akjfd fdfsfa " speaking in tongues to be a false and satanic practice.

I see it as a modern form of frenzied shamanic trance mixed up with brainwashing.

One may naturally enquire, what is that which withholds, and after that would know, why Paul expresses it so obscurely. What then is it that withholds, that is, hinders him from being revealed? Some indeed say, the grace of the Spirit, but others the Roman empire, to whom I most of all accede. Wherefore? Because if he meant to say the Spirit, he would not have spoken obscurely, but plainly, that even now the grace of the Spirit, that is the gifts, withhold him. And otherwise he ought now to have come, if he was about to come when the gifts ceased; for they have long since ceased.

source: Homilies on Second Thessalonians (Chrysostom)

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/23054.htm

If nobody can understand what you are saying then you are not talking in tongues.

I believe the gift of tongues is the ability to pick up languages with greater ease. There are quite a few Mormon missionaries that can give testimony to just how real this gift is.

As "praying in tongues" is practices in Pentecostal churches, there is no communication going on in any direction. It's people making a big fuss over a bunch of meaningless, unintelligible noises.

It's embarrassing to watch, frankly, and only makes atheists like me thing pentecostals are no different than practitioners of voodoo.

No Christian who has knowledge of scripture denies "speaking in tongues." But how much importance do you attach to it? Read 1st Corinthians 14:1 -39

Speaking in tongues did not exist for well over one thousand years. That's a very long time. And it has only recently re-appeared amongst a few heretical sects. Are we to imagine that the practice died for so long only to be revived among a very small minority of heretics?

Many Christians, and I am one of them, that believes 'speaking in tongues' is a gift from God and that it is not a prerequisite to heaven. But every Christian who believes in the 'gifts' that Paul spoke of desires to have all of them. Speaking in tongues is one of God's 'gifts' the Paul wrote about.