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lambda.calc has decided not to take part in the announced new debate, so it will not happen.

I’m announcing the opening of a new debate between lambda.calc and Neil Shenvi, continuing the very long and unusually excellent debate they began at Thinking Christian. I am reserving the right to jump in as well.

Both lambda.calc and Neil have been invited to bring opening statements here. I haven’t received those statements yet, but I want to open up the site for them to contribute anyway. After I hear from them and get going, we’ll be able to put the word out that this is under way now.

New readers please note how this debate is set up: it’s different from most blogs you’ve encountered.

Note: comments are currently disabled. I need to find a few minutes some other time soon to correct that. Fixed.

The Tom Gilson-Luke Muehlhauser debate is now closed. See the previous two entries for the participants’ final remarks.

Luke has posted his response to this on his blog: Is Jesus an “Invisible, Magical, Wish-Granting Friend” to Christians?  

Luke,

You told me today,

Tom, you say these qualities are not literally true of your concept of Jesus. But I re-read all your posts that you linked to, and I still don’t understand which of these attributes you specifically deny of Jesus. You repeat many times that my caricature of Jesus as an “invisible, magical, wish-granting friend” is incomplete and does not give a full or helpful summary of Christian doctrine, but we have agreed on that point from the beginning.

I have explained these things more than once, Luke. The main problem with your depiction of Christian belief is not that there is no kernel of truth in it, but that it distorts the truth by imbalancing its presentation of what Christian belief is. I have explained this repeatedly in my last several letters here, and also this at Thinking Christian).

Your unwillingness or inability to see this bodes very poorly for the progress we might be able to make in future debate. It doesn’t even give me hope for getting this one off the ground productively. In my last letter I said that if we could not settle this we would be at an impasse, before we even have opportunity really to begin, because we cannot agree on the topic we are debating.

Because we cannot come to this basic level of agreement, very regretfully I am declaring my part in this debate at an end, which of course ends it for both of us.

Please note that I am not pulling out because of disagreement on conclusions to our debate. Rather it is because we have been unable to settle on the terms of the debate; and specifically, it is because you insist on re-defining the basic terms of the opposite side in such a tendentious manner.

I am sure you will want to have opportunity to give a word of response. If you post it on your own blog I will link to it here.

Regretfully and with disappointment,

Tom

Tom,

I just don’t see a contradiction between the statements of mine you quoted. In neither case did I indicate that I was offering a complete or well-r0unded summary of Christian doctrine.

But you’re right, it is important that I understand which flavor of Christianity you defend. Right now I’m still under the impression that you think Jesus is an…

• Invisible. He wouldn’t be much of a god if he wasn’t. He would be much of a god if he was some powerful guy sitting on a throne atop mount Figi, that you could just climb to and chat with.
• Magical. Again, he wouldn’t be much of a god if he wasn’t. Though some Christians are materialists, standard Christian doctrine says that Jesus is magical, so much so that most Christians wouldn’t even consider Christian materialists to be Christian at all. And if Jesus isn’t magical in the sense of “supernatural,” that would just mean he must be magical in the trivial sense of being an illusionist.
• Wish-granting. Just as some Christians deny that Jesus is supernatural, some Christians also deny that Jesus answers prayer requests. But you believe in intercessory prayer, right, Tom? Or have I got that wrong?
• Friend. I suppose this is the most contentious, but I still think most Christians think of Jesus as – among many other things - a loving companion with whom they have a personal relationship. Is that not part of how you conceive of Jesus, Tom? Have I got that wrong?

Tom, you say these qualities are not literally true of your concept of Jesus. But I re-read all your posts that you linked to, and I still don’t understand which of these attributes you specifically deny of Jesus. You repeat many times that my caricature of Jesus as an “invisible, magical, wish-granting friend” is incomplete and does not give a full or helpful summary of Christian doctrine, but we have agreed on that point from the beginning.

So I’m still confused. Which of the above adjectives does not apply to your concept of Jesus, and why? Surely you don’t think Jesus is normally visible to the naked eye. Are you a Christian materialist? Do you deny intercessory prayer? Do you not think of Jesus as your friend? Which part have I misunderstood? I suspect we must be using slightly different definitions for “magic” or “wish granting” or “friend” or something…

Cheers,

Luke

Luke, you say,

“I never intended to imply that Jesus was just an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend, or that Christianity was just belief in an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend. I have repeatedly affirmed otherwise. I never said that was a complete description of him.”

and

Maybe here’s where the misunderstanding is. I never said that calling Jesus an “invisible, magical, wish-granting friend” was to offer a good description of Christian belief, either. I know it’s distorted.

But you have also said,

I am not attacking straw men. I am attacking standard Christian doctrine.

The problem is not that I mock standard Christian doctrine. The problem is that standard Christian doctrine is so easily mockable. Please don’t complain that I’m sometimes not nice about your belief that you have an invisible friend. Instead, please stop believing you have an invisible friend….

If you’re an average Christian, you do believe in magic, you do believe you have an invisible friend, you do believe Jesus was a man-god, and you do believe Jesus resurrected and flew off into the sky….

My message to mainstream Christians is this: Don’t pretend like that’s not what we’re debating. Don’t hide behind obscurantist language. You believe you have a magical invisible friend who sometimes grants you wishes and you know it. You just don’t like how ridiculous it sounds when I state your beliefs in plain, simple English.

If the shoe fits…

Now apart from “man-god” and “resurrected,” that’s as trivializing as anything I’ve pointed out to you here, and as distorted. I don’t see you disavowing this distortion. I only see you making it equivalent to “belief in an ‘Almighty Creator and Savior.” Sure, the second is an incomplete picture, but it’s not a trivializing incomplete picture. One distorts through incompleteness, the other distorts through error.

Later in your most recent letter you say,

But it was literally true of what I believed.

If it was, then I’m glad you don’t believe that anymore. But if you continue to say this is “standard Christian doctrine” that is “so easily mockable,” then all I can do is refer you again to my refutations of that in my Letter 16 and its postscript, my Letter 15, and my Thinking Christian post on the subject, which I know you have read already. These show that your mocking depiction of Christianity is not literally true. I don’t know how I could show it any more clearly than I have.

Until we come to agreement on this, we have not come to agreement on the topic of the debate we are having here. The Christianity you are, in your own mind, disputing, is vastly different from genuine Christianity. I’ve demonstrated in a negative way how your view can be shown to be wrong, and I have shown at least a glimpse (at Thinking Christian) of the positive side of Christianity in its undistorted form.

We have to get through this to a realistic view of Christianity, or we will be at an impasse.

Tom,

It sounds to me like we’re more in agreement than you might think!

I never intended to imply that Jesus was just an invisible, magical,¹ wish-granting friend, or that Christianity was just belief in an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend. I have repeatedly affirmed otherwise. I never said that was a complete description of him.

But you say that my choice to call Jesus an “invisible, magical, wish-granting friend” is like a woman calling her husband “someone who eats corn flakes” or calling the Grand Canyon “a big hole in the ground.” Both are literally true but not at all a good picture of the husband or the Grand Canyon.

Maybe here’s where the misunderstanding is. I never said that calling Jesus an “invisible, magical, wish-granting friend” was to offer a good description of Christian belief, either. I know it’s distorted. In the same way, saying that Christianity is belief in an “Almighty Creator and Savior” is also a huge distortion, for it leaves out hugely important attributes like God’s invisibility, supernaturality, prayer-responsiveness, and so on. (But I’ve said that already.)

My point was not to offer a helpful² summary of Christian belief. In a “World Religions 101″ article it would be ludicrous to say that Christianity is belief in an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend and then move on! No, my purpose was much different. It was, as I’ve said, to jolt believers with something that is undeniably, literally true about what they believe, so that they might be better able to examine their worldview more objectively, “from the outside.” And I do that to myself all the time, too.

If I was a dogmatic worshiper of the Grand Canyon, I hope someone would have the courage to ask “Why are you worshiping a big hole in the ground?” That would be literally true but also a huge distortion of the majesty of the Grand Canyon. But it might help me to examine my beliefs more objectively, since it would be literally true of what I believe.

Tom, when I was a Christian and I got jolted by an atheist who said I literally had an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend, it wasn’t as if I thought that’s all Jesus was. No, I knew Christianity’s impressive intellectual history. I knew its theological complexity and magnificence. I knew Jesus was a whole lot more than an invisible, magical, and wish-granting friend. I knew that wasn’t a very complete or helpful description of Jesus in the Christian tradition. I was already reading people like Dallas Willard and William Lane Craig and Richard Swinburne. I did not have a Sunday School concept of Christianity.

But it was literally true of what I believed. And that disturbed me enough to try to take the faith-colored glasses off so I could look at Christianity with the same eyes as I looked at every other religion – so I could drop the dishonest double standard. And when I did that, I eventually came to the conclusion that Christianity had no more warrant than Islam or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism or Sikhism or Zoroastrianism. As Christian philosopher James D. Strauss said, “If you don’t start with God, you’ll never get to God.”

No, the Grand Canyon isn’t just a big hole in the ground. But if I’m dogmatically worshiping the Grand Canyon, I hope somebody will have the guts to ask, “Why are you worshiping a big hole in the ground?” Of course I would complain that the Grand Canyon is not “just” a big hole in the ground, and that this is a huge distortion of what I believe, but hopefully the truth of this question would jar me just enough to help me look at my beliefs more objectively.

Tom, I must thank you. I think you’ve helped me understand part of why Christians react so negatively to my statement that according to Christian tradition Jesus is “an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend.” If they think that I’m trying to offer a complete or even a helpful depiction of the Christian worldview, or a helpful summary of the Christian conception of Jesus, then they are quite right to be upset! But I never intended any such thing. So now I know how to be more clear that I do not think this is a complete or helpful summary of the Christian concept of Jesus, and that is not my intention is using the phrase.

And perhaps you disagree with me that phrasing our beliefs in personally disagreeable terms can be useful. In that case you will say there is no legitimate purpose for my saying that Christians believe Jesus to be (among other things) an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend. We can agree to disagree on that if necessary. I don’t think it’s pertinent to our debate. As I’ve said, in this debate I’m not going to respond to Christianity as I see it (and I do not see it as just a belief in an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend). I’m going to respond to Christianity however you present it as the best explanation for certain phenomena.

So I think we’re in agreement. According to Christian tradition, Jesus is an invisible (unseen), magical (supernatural), wish-granting (prayer-responsive) friend (loving companion). That’s literally true. But he’s much more than that! According to Christian tradition, Jesus is divine. He is God sent to earth to fulfill his own perfect justice and mercy. He sacrificially took upon himself God’s perfect justice - the wages of our rebellion, death – but also offered to us God’s perfect mercy – the gift of eternal redemption and reconciliation. And that’s something much more than an invisible, magical, wish-granting friend!

And Christianity has by far the most highly developed and well-defended theologies in the world. Islam gave up any intellectual pretensions around the 13th century and hasn’t yet recovered them. Some forms of Buddhism have been more accepting of science than Christianity, but its philosophers and religious leaders have not bothered to engage with the latest developments in logic, metaphysics, and epistemology like Christians have. I can’t find anybody from non-Christian religious thought to compare to van Inwagen, Alston, Plantinga, or Swinburne.

In fact, I can agree with atheist philosopher Quentin Smith, who wrote the following in his review of Swinburne’s Is There a God? (1997):

I think Swinburne has succeeded in his endeavour to show (in a short book, addressed to the lay public) that theism is not intellectually a lost cause… My ‘dialectical duels’ with Swinburne in this review article are precisely what Swinburne wants to show to be possible; theism versus atheism is a matter for rational argument.

But the importance of Swinburne’s work in this area is much greater than some suppose, since Swinburne is not merely contributing new ‘arguments for God’s existence’, but is doing ground-breaking work in discussing how scientific reasoning can be applied to the question of why the universe exists… If monotheism goes the way of polytheism, many of Swinburne’s original and stimulating contributions to the topic of ultimate explanations will still stand.

Cheers,

Luke

1. Tom, you’re right that shifting the descriptor of “magic” to believers rather than Jesus changes the subject. I said it was Jesus who, according to Christian tradition, practiced magic. And I’m happy to continue defending that. You say it’s not magic because Jesus didn’t invoke the supernatural to affect the natural world. Rather, he used his own supernatural powers to heal the lame and exorcise demons, etc. But I don’t really see the difference. Whether he’s calling on God’s magic powers or using his own magic powers, they’re still magic powers. Saying that it’s Jesus’ own magical powers doing the work only makes Jesus all the more magical. In that case, Jesus himself is magical rather than just being a conduit or summoner of magical powers. [↩]
2. Of course, I think it is “helpful” in the sense I’ve indicated. Such a depiction of Jesus can be helpful in waking us from our dogmatic slumbers. It can help us look at our own worldviews more objectively. But it is not helpful for developing a complete and well-rounded understanding of Christian theology. [↩]

Luke,

I could have said all of that much more simply. I apologize for breaking the rhythm here by adding this short P.S., but I think this will help clarify the situation.

You say that Christianity is the belief in an invisible magical friend who grants wishes. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that is literally accurate.¹ I say the Grand Canyon as a hole in the ground. I think you would have to grant that is also literally true.

If, however, I go on from there to say, “‘The Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground’ is a depiction of the Grand Canyon that is accurate for purposes of discussing its worth and value,” you would have to respond, that’s just ludicrous.

If you say, “‘Christianity is the belief in an invisible magical friend who grants wishes’ is a depiction that is accurate for purposes of discussing Christianity’s worth and value,” I have to respond—and you should also recognize—that’s just as ludicrous. For these purposes it is most certainly not accurate, and I continue to recommend that when you are discussing the worth and value of Christianity, you drop this obviously inaccurate depiction.

1. My true position on that is detailed in my previous letters. [↩]

Luke,

I can see that I misunderstood your phrase “invisible … friend” when I took it to mean something like a childhood imaginary friend. I stand corrected on that, and I appreciate the clarification. I continue to hold, however, that the way you have depicted Christian belief is massively distorted. The general form of the distortion is to pick out those attributes of God that are most easily trivialized and make the least of them. Thomas Reid commented to say,

Your description here is analogous to the women who, when asked to describe her husband to the best of her ability, called him “someone who eats corn flakes”. Of course that’s technically true about him, but misses the much more important and fundamental aspects of his character. Most assuredly, this detail has no bearing on why she married him.

It’s an excellent analysis. Here’s another similar version: the teenager who, when asked to explain who her dad is, says, “He’s the guy who hangs around the house sometimes and buys us things,” or who says that her mom is “the lady who lives here and does stuff and buys us things.” If there’s truth in either description, it’s a twisted truth (unless the parents are twisted parents), because these are not the first things a child would normally say about her parents, nor are they the most important or salient.

I must stay on this topic until we agree on what it is we are debating over. You wrote,

But I never said the two were the same, or even implied it. I used the term “invisible friend,” I did not invoke the notion of a childhood imaginary friend, and as you admitted, the term “invisible friend” is literally true of what you believe.

Literally true? Yes, God is invisible in a woodenly literal sense; i.e., we can’t take a picture of him. He wouldn’t be much of a god (the lower case there is intentional) if we could. The description does not apply, however, if by “invisible” one means imperceptible or (by extension) unknowable in principle. God’s reality is perceptible in his works of creation, his revelation through Scripture, his presence in prayer, his guidance, the work he does in and through other believers, and more. And he actually did reveal himself visibly in the person of Christ for a time, of which we have a reliable record.

God is certainly a friend, and yes, I do literally believe in him as one. But as Josh McDowell used to put it, “He may be your Father but he’s not your Old Man.” He is not to be regarded without worshipful respect. He’s a friend, but he’s also the all-wise, all-powerful sovereign creator. It would be crazy to consider him a friend in the common “friend” sense that there is parity between God and me.

He’s a friend who “grants wishes,” you say. Now, that’s not parity, I’ll grant you that you have recognized that. You see that God (in your version of what Christians believe) has the ability to do extra-special things I can’t do, so he has some powers I don’t have. But my relationship with him is one in which I call on him when I need a favor done, and he does it for me sometimes.

Again, that’s an extremely trivialized and distorted picture of who God is and how Christians relate to him. Our relationship with him is primarily one of worship and love, in view of his own love and his absolute superiority. The relatioship is also one in which I grow into conformity with his character by maturing in the knowledge of him. It is one in which he answers prayer because of his love, not because of my controlling him like a genie in a bottle; and in which he answers prayer also to make his glory known.

As to the word magical, you wrote most recently,

But either way, Christians themselves certainly invoke the supernatural all the time. They pray to God to affect the natural world in their favor. They believe there is a particular “art” to it, as Jesus taught it (the Lord’s prayer, etc.). Most Christians believe there are specific techniques that are more effective than others, whether it be candles or holy water or drawing a cross on one’s forehead with oil.

You have changed the reference of the term here now. You said before that we believed in a “magical friend,” that God was magical. I remind you of my prior objection to that, which is that God does not (per the definition of magic) practice any art to conjure up results out of some power external to himself. You are probably literally right to say that “most Christians believe there are specific techniques taht are more effective than others,” but the Bible teaches, and maturing Christians know, that true prayer is a matter of relationship, not technique; and the most fundamental aspect of that relationship is to lovingly and trustingly seek God’s will in us, not God’s favors for us.

You say,

As for granting wishes, I never said that God’s only role was in granting wishes, just as I never said that his only attributes were invisibility, magicality, and friendliness. In any case, it sounds like you’ve agreed that your idea of God sometimes grants wishes (if not, then I assume you reject the idea of intercessory prayer, as some Christians do).

You never said those were his only attributes, but when you mock Christians for believing in an “invisible magical friend who grants wishes,” you effectively ignore all the other dimensions of Christian belief that make that not so ridiculous.

Why do people travel miles to see the Grand Canyon? It’s just a hole in the ground. That’s literally true and yet massively misleading. Misleading in a particular way, in fact: the person who insists that this is an adequate literal depiction of the Grand Canyon displays an impoverished sense of imagination, reality, perspective, or all three. Either that or else he is intentionally trying to cheapen and distort a great thing, so as to make those who appreciate its greatness seem like unthinking fools. The distortion reflects considerably more on him, however, than on those who see it for what it is.

You say a sad thing here:

As a Christian, when I realized that I literally believed in an invisible magical friend who grants me wishes, I ranted and raved against the atheist who said it. I told him he was being unfair and disingenuous. I really let him have it.

Maybe you really did believe in an invisible magical friend who granted you wishes. If so, then you certainly needed to grow out of that belief. The biblical term for it is idolatry. But if you actually had a belief in the God of the Bible, you should not have told that atheist he was being unfair and disingenuous. You should have told him he was wrong. He was insidiously wrong, in that yes, there is a small kernel of truth in all the words in that phrase, but God is not small, and are relationship with him is not a small thing, so overall, that depiction of the faith amounts to a large deception. It’s sad to me that you didn’t see it properly that way at the time.

I think this is extremely relevant to the course of our debate, Luke, because as I said last time, it makes no sense to debate the truth or value of Christianity or God when the words mean something so trivial to you. I am not here to defend belief in an invisible magical friend who grants wishes, and if you think that’s literally true of my position, as you have so often repeated (with italics), then we haven’t even defined the terms of our discussion yet.

Thank you, though, for your additional point of agreement:

For x to be a successful explanation of y, we do not need to also have an explanation of x.

That’s important and helpful. I hope we’ll get to the point soon where we can work on these things.