But Sylas, my point is that they want the appearance of agreeing to debate Walt while basically not agreeing to debate only the facts.
I know what your point is. I disagree with it.
The fact is that the real debate is going on all the time, just fine.
Another fact is that religion is central to Brown's creationism. If he doesn't want to talk about that aspect, that's his choice. His insistence that no-one else can talk about it either is silly, but then so is just about everything else in his writings.
But it is not his choice to arbitrarily deny the reality of ongoing debate that does not take the form of collaborating with him in writing a book on his own personally chosen terms.
Brown's grandstanding about his debate "offer" is not the real debate. If anyone took it up, that would not make it the "real" debate. It would be just another bit of the debate. The real debate is going on all the time without any need for all this nonsense about having to write a book about it.
I think a natural reading of the original agreement is that it included the agreement that a third party would rule on variations of the written protocols, including scope. If Brown did not intend that, then the original wording was sloppy. He's fixed up the wording, so I am not inclined to fuss much about the matter.
However, one thing is clear at this point. Brown has a debate offer on the table that he is refusing to take up, because he insists that the other party of the debate may not mention religion, and he is unwilling to let that point be abitrated by a debate moderator.
Of course, Brown is free to set the terms under which he is willing to debate. But he looks very silly indeed posturing about how other people don't want to debate on his terms when he refuses to debate on theirs.
In my estimation, Brown is a lightweight in the rather comical parade of creationists, and not worth a great deal of time. If someone wanted to write a book on creationism, then Brown's debate offer is a lousy way to go about it.
Cheers -- Sylas