Life is worth living

Let's review the case so far, shall we? My opponent has the burden of affirming the value of life. He must show that life is worth living. He did not define this as "Life is worth living for most people," or that "Life is generally considered to be worth living;" either of which are reasonably defensible positions. He did not qualify in his first round that he sought to show life's inherent value based on some value system; we might have had something to argue about, if he had. Instead, he tried a cheap rhetorical trick, basing his entire argument on the fact that I, personally, had not yet comitted suicide. Not only does that predicate the value of life on my personal -and wholly subjective - judgement, it also establishes his position on the value of life to be one of personal cost-benefit analysis. Is life worth living, as a personal value judgement, to me or anyone else, right now? If it is not, the resolution fails. My R2 argument is completely fictional. I am not, in fact, looking to take my life. I was illustrating the vital weakness of his argument; based on my own completely unverifiable outlook on life, his argument cannot hold any weight in this debate -and he has, in fact, dropped it. He then takes the extraordinary measure of refusing to post ANY argument in favor of his position, claiming in R3 that he cannot respond properly to my non-argument. My R2 "argument," as far as it went, was simply providing counter-evidence to his highly-flawed R2 claim that life is worth living because I find it to be so. He still has not provided any evidence that life is actually worth living, nor has he any sufficient answer to the fact that a great many people find it to be NOT worth living. In fact, the universal and subjective nature of the resolution as he has interpreted it means if even ONE person, in all of human history, has ever concluded that life is not worth living, then his position is false and the resolution is negated. If life is only worth living because we decide it is so, then for anyone who decides it isn't the resolution is false. My opponent's statements about the greater preponderance of people who have not yet committed suicide are misleading and irrelevant. Since there are people who have taken their own lives, the statement "Life is worth living" cannot be held to be universally true. He has phrased the debate in such a way that the value of life is a universal positive - and his solitary argument places the determination of this value on a reasoned cost/benefit analysis on my part, and by extension, on the part of everyone who has ever lived. Not only does this show an overly-simplified view of human nature, but it also gives the opinion of suicide committers equal weight with those who live out their lives. If the value of life for me is dependent on my viewpoint, the value of life for you is dependent on yours; which is certainly a reasonable position to take. Circumstances vary, after all. But the resolution does not give room for any variance; "Life is worth living" does not give any wiggle room for any exceptions or dissenters. A universal positive is almost always a form of over-generalization for this very reason; it only takes one counterexample to make the universal positive false. This is a serious problem for my opponent. He has so far failed to present any case for his side of the debate. He is the one supposed to be making the case for the value of life; if he does not, he cannot win. I extend my arguments, as he has merely quibbled at the details, rather than answering their substance. I ask him to provide some substantial case that life is in fact worth living to everyone, as that is what the resolution demands. I also call for a reasonable response to my arguments of people who have committed suicide; his attempts to downplay the number are irrelevant, and ignore the fact that even one person taking their own life is a tragedy that raises the question: why is life worth living? My opponent has not attempted to give an answer to that question, and has only one round left to do it in. I thank him for the debate, and return it to him.