This House Believes Ontology Necessitates God!

The Resolution is a Non-StarterThe resolution states that Ontology necessitates God, which is a fancy way of saying that by simply using your mind to ponder the question, one can reach a justified conclusion that God exists. This immediately forces us to question what counts as being justified. Fortunately, that question has already been answered.In any debate or formulized setting where one is expected to convince others of the truth of a proposition, the golden standard to achieve this goal is the use of sound argumentation. A sound argument is one with two necessary characteristics: 1) The premises are true, and 2) The premises lead to the conclusion.For a premises to be true it must be consistent with reality. This is where the notion of using thought alone to discover truth falls apart, for the very attempt leaves Pro with a dilemma; To use thought alone is to not use known reality as a basis. However, a premise not based in reality cannot be accepted as true given the definition. On the other hand, a premise based in reality does not meet Pros definition of an ontological argument since it requires nothing more than a conceptualization as the starting point. Therefore, Ontology by Pros definition cannot be sound, and thus cannot be used as justification to prove the existence of God.Of course despite all of this, Pro has laid out his arguments for why he disagrees. My job in this debate is to negate his arguments. The above was simply given as a basis to explain my viewpoint, which may come into play later in the round and throughout debate.Pros SyllogismPro sums up his argument with a syllogism that he believes, leads us to the conclusion that God necessarily exists. I laid it out below for easy reference:1. The idea of God exists in cognition, independent of experience. 2. If an idea of cognition which exists independent of experience exists, it is either false or necessarily true. 3. If an idea of cognition which exists independent of experience is false then it is imaginative. 4, The idea of God cannot be imagined. 5. Ergo: the idea of God is necessarily true.The biggest flaw in this syllogism is going from point 4 to point 5. I don't know how Pro finds this justifiable, however just by reading the points and looking back at his argument the problem seems apparent; Pro is misusing the word "imagined" to be synonymous with "false". Therefore his syllogism is simply stating "the idea of God cannot be [false], Ergo: the idea of God is necessarily true". This of course would be a true statement, however the statement "God cannot be false" is what Ontology is supposed to be proving thus it cannot be a premise.To further support my assessment let's simply look at the premises. In point 3 Pro states that a false idea independent of experience is imaginative. Here, he is creating a necessary link between the terms "false" and "imaginative" simply by calling it that. Next he states that God cannot be imagined. That alone does not confirm how he meant the word imaginary, but his conclusion then states that God is necessarily true. That conclusion only follows if being imagined = being false. This is a classic fallacy of equivocation.The idea of God exists in cognition, independent of experience - The idea of God cannot be imagined.I find that Pros premises one and four demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of what the concept of God is. In Pros defense of premise one he expands: "God is transcendent of time, space, and number, and since the sensation depends on these three, it follows we cannot feel God. This premise means there has been no impression of God". The problem however is that every possible understanding we have of God comes directly from our experiences. We would not be able to understand what it is to transcend time, space, or numbers, if we did not already experience time, space, and numbers. Each of these concepts along with any other possible explanation of what God is cannot be understood without our experiences and it is only our experiences that we use in our attempts to understand it.When it comes to not being able to imagine God Pro explains: "God is a simple idea, imagination cannot come up with simple ideas, and therefore just as two elements however mixed together cannot create but a compound, imagination cannot create the idea of the Being of God". I agree that imagination cannot create the idea of God, because the idea is actually nothing more than a non-idea. To illustrate this allow me to use Pros definition of God, broken into points:1. a transcendental entity, 2. escapes the boundaries of human cognition3. holds the answer to key metaphysical concepts. 4. God here is a Being who is different than Nature or the UniverseNote that every single point Pro uses to define God only describes only what God is not. A transcendental entity is one that does not exist within the specified realm (transcends time, transcends space, etc...). To escape the boundaries is to not be within them. Metaphysical is best explained as "not physical". And being different than Nature or the Universe... that's self-explanatory. In order to imagine something you need to know what it is, not what it is not. If I stated that I am not running, that does not tell one what I am doing. I could be walking, standing, sitting, etc... There is nothing remarkable about not being able to imagine something when you don't know what that something actually is. And not knowing what something is has no tie to the truth of whether that something exists.Because of all of this, Pros premise one is just plain wrong, and his premise 4 is meaningless when used in the way he argues it.Law of Excluded MiddlePro argues that if an idea is not false then it must be true. It is important to note that the 3rd law of logic refers to reality, not ones belief about reality. In other words the actual truth of a claim will always be limited to two options, but when it comes to what one believes about that truth there are 3 options (belief in the positive, absence of belief, and belief in the negative), therefore the law does not apply because in that scenario there is a middle.SummaryWhile I disagree with many things Pro stated I felt it best to address only the parts I found relevant to this debate. Pros argument is a fallacy of equivocation stemming from a lack of understanding of how our experiences tie to our understanding of what God is.Also, one quick note about sources; Pro states that sources must be referenced but I remind Pro and the judges that this is a philosophical debate and therefore sources may not be necessary. I did not look up any of my arguments and do I foresee myself doing so, so I do not anticipate needing to reference any. This should be considered before any points are awarded either way.