Ontological and teleological arguments cannot accurately tell us whether God exists

Unfortunately, Pro has peppered his comments with his feelings and so many fallacies, that I must set them aside first so we may get to the nut of the problem.It is strange to me that theists such as William Lane Craig still bring up ontological arguments as part of their debate-level apologietics when they know full well that after being fully examined, one finds that these arguments aren't useful or persuasive, regardless of whether or not they are valid. 1. What evidence do you have that Craig knows “full well” that the ontological argument isn’t useful or persuasive?2. I am not sure what you or Oppy mean by “persuasive.” A speech might be persuasive because it moves people emotionally to agree with the speaker. Or an argument might be persuasive because it is logically valid and the premises are true. You toss away validity too casually. If an argument is valid, that means premises produce a conclusion that follows. That’s an excellent first step in any argument.Craig routinely claims that unless this argument can be refuted, then his opponent cannot demonstrate the truth of Atheism, and thus he necessarily wins the debate. Since his argument aims to prove that God exists necessarily, it is impossible to prove atheism unless one can prove that God does not exist necessarily. If Craig’s argument is left untouched, then you have a foolish-looking atheist arguing that God does not exist in the face of uncontested proof that God exists and that he exists. Suppose you and I debated how many oranges there are in a closed box. I look in the box and declare there are 16 oranges. Your rebuttal is that there are eight oranges, but you don’t look in the box. The atheist needs to look in the box and show how Craig’s argument fails. Other than being annoyed, I don’t see any logical problem with Craig’s claim as you state it.Opponents like Harris tend not to sink to his level of intellectual dishonesty, for it is also the case that Ontological arguments can be used to disprove God just as readily, and with just the same validity, and just the same level of unpersuasiveness. Let’s call this the fallacy of name-calling. It is useful to paint your opponent as stupid, evil, or stooping to intellectual dishonesty. But Pro’s attack fails to prove that Craig is mistaken.Observe:It is possible that God does not exist. God is not a contingent being, i.e., either it is not possible that God exists, or it is necessary that God exists. Hence it is not possible that God exists. Hence God does not exist.Convinced by that? Of course not, nor should you be. Nor am I, or any other skeptics, by theist versions. When extraneous and confusing arguments that amount to 2 + 2 = 4 are removed, the skeleton of all of these arguments tends to boil down to the incredibly hollow tautology:These comments make little sense. Pro’s argument dips into the wonders of modal logic. He mimics an argument trying to show that it is wrong. But mimicry is the tool of those who can’t that an argument is genuinely wrong. He can’t prove the argument is wrong, so he simply says its “extraneous and confusing” and an “incredibly hollow tautology.” Something odd about 2+2=4 annoys Pro, but leaves me quite confused, wondering why he is upset with mathematics.If God (defined as "perfect being," "maximally great," whatever...) exists, then God exists.Here is another attempt to parody a fine argument. His pseudo argument is “If God is defined as whatever, then God exists.” Let’s try that argument. “If God is defined as a unicorn [a whatever], then God exists.” Hmmm. Using his language, this argument makes no sense. I gave the real argument above. Maybe Pro would like to object to the argument as I wrote it.Perhaps it is worth adding here that there is fairly widespread consensus, even amongst theists, that no known ontological arguments for the existence of God are persuasive. Most categories of ontological argument have some actual defenders; but none has a large following.Why bother with rational argument? Let’s take a survey and the biggest number wins. As long as we have “fairly widespread consensus” and a “large following,” we don’t need to pursue the truth of things. The suggestion that the number of people agreeing with you determines whether you’re right or not is absurd. Here's an example. Africans became slaves because a lot of people thought slavery was right. The truth is that slavery is wrong no matter how many people think it is right.Finally, we get to something substantial. Maybe we can sort out the validity of the ontological argument now.Sorry folks, it is not to be. Pro leaves with a long quite that he thinks proves his point. I encourage him to explain that quote and show us how it proves his point.Of course, all of the above discussion is directed merely to the claim that ontological arguments are not dialectically efficacious—i.e., they give reasonable non-theists no reason to change their views. It might be wondered whether there is some other use which ontological arguments have—e.g., as Plantinga claims, in establishing the reasonableness of theism. This seems unlikely. After all, at best these arguments show that certain sets of sentences (beliefs, etc.) are incompatible—one cannot reject the conclusions of these arguments while accepting their premises. But the arguments themselves say nothing about the reasonableness of accepting the premisses. So the arguments themselves say nothing about the (unconditional) reasonableness of accepting the conclusions of these arguments. Those who are disposed to think that theism is irrational need find nothing in ontological arguments to make them change their minds (and those who are disposed to think that theism is true should take no comfort from them either).So, I ask my fine friend here: “How does this quote prove your point?”