Discussion Grounds

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