Ontological and teleological arguments cannot accurately tell us whether God exists

I thank Con for his acceptance, and look forward to what I'm sure will be an exciting debate. This is a topic that I've been looking forward to discussing (venting about?) ever since the first time I watched Harris vs. Craig battle it out at Notre Dame.http://youtu.be...My primary source for this round was the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I do not claim the ideas expressed here to be my own, save for the most ornery ones.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. More annoyingly, their opponents let them (him) get away with it. 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. To unsophistocated or casual observers in the audience, it can look as if Craig has scored major points by offering arguments for which his opponent has no defense. 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. 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:If God (defined as "perfect being," "maximally great," whatever...) exists, then God exists.As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains in section 4, after elaborating on various criticisms of the ontological argument: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.it continues,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). [1]In my mind, there are a number of important things that theists, agnostics, and atheists ought to be discussing with one another. That highly intelligent debaters like Craig resort to spending time on trivial things like the ontological argument is a disappointment. It is my hope that this practice will grow out of fashion as the awareness of the audience grows.I thank readers for their time and pass the round over to Con.1) Oppy, Graham, "Ontological Arguments", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu...;