Ontological and teleological arguments cannot accurately tell us whether God exists

As we begin the final round, I will remind readers of the original resolution: Ontological and teleological arguments cannot accurately inform humans as to whether God exists. Burden of proof is shared. Since Con admitted that he did not have sufficient faith in Teleological arguments to come to their defense, we both decided to ignore that type of argument. I would put forth the motion that readers should disregard the teleological aspect of this debate entirely, and judge only with respect to Ontological arguments. I think this especially appropriate since the rules state we are not to raise new arguments in the final round, but can only clarify, bolster, and summarize what is on the table already. On A Priori Premises I do not mean to contend that all a priori propositions must necessarily be false, or that they must be automatically rejected. What I will say is that we ought to be skeptical. Consider again, the a priori premise which tends to be my own intuition: “There is no God.” However we might personally feel, we should be very careful about making such unverifiable assertions and using them in proofs. So too should the theist. A priori argumentation does not provide us with uncontestable evidence, and thus not accurate knowledge. At best, it establishes a theory which may or may not be useful, and which we may or may not ever be able to prove or disprove. Even well-established scientific principles with considerable predictive ability and supporting evidence are still only given the status “theory.” “Theory of Evolution”, “Theory of Relativity”, “String Theory”... no one speaks of these as being matters of truth, at least not in the way that my opponent tries to insinuate. The existence or non-existence of God is similarly still not known. Thus, for the most part, these ontological arguments are doing little more than begging the question. [1] Together We Stand, Together We Fall My opponent would have you believe that the ease with which one can offer up ontological parodies does no damage whatsoever to his case, and that the only way to defeat it is to show that the logic is invalid or the premises are false. I actually have done that, but regardless he is wrong that this is my only path to victory. With respect to parodies, the biggest problem I see for my opponent is that parallel Atheistic Ontologies such as the one I presented earlier are on equal footing epistemologically with the kind he provided. This is absolutely devastating to the credibility of Con’s case, and he gives himself license to brush off an obvious double standard only by special pleading [2]: “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.” Observe that his comments backfire on him when we see that he can’t disprove my parallel Ontological Argument! I am not claiming that it actually tells us anything worthwhile, in fact I don’t think it really does, and so the burden is not on me, the burden is instead heavy on Con to explain to us why his should stand while mine should not. If he can’t manage to successfully disentangle them, then either both stand, which is nonsense, or both fall, and I have won. “God” - What Does That Even Mean? A potentially fatal attack which my opponent did nothing to counter was the issue of whether God is even a coherent idea in the first place. He squandered the last round criticizing Dawkins and name dropping famous thinkers who agree with him, but most of what my friend discussed is beside the point. At any rate, my opponent believes God is necessarily perfect, and compared it to 5 + 7 = 12. I suggested that the “maximally great number” is a better analogy for God, but uncomfortably, such an idea is incoherent since there is no “maximally great number”. Perhaps God is better thought of as being incoherent as well. I also noted that “Perfection,” his preferred word, “fares no better when mapped onto a number system.” Let me elaborate further on why God may be incoherent by using a quote from Wikipedia’s article: “The ontological argument assumes the definition of God purported by classical theism: that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.[20] Kenneth Einar Himma claimed that omniscience and omnipotence may be incompatible: if God is omnipotent, then he should be able to create a being with free will; if he is omniscient, then he should know exactly what such a being will do (thus rendering them without free will).” [3] In Conclusion My opponent has been unable or unwilling to adequately defend against several arguments which seriously undermine his position. He has instead squandered his rounds lecturing on topics which are only tangentially relevant. Of those, the most damaging arguments I have presented were conflicting ontologies, and the incoherence of the God idea. With respect to these my opponent dropped the argument by not responding at all to coherance, and in my mind doing a poor job of it with respect to parodies. Here is DDO’s ruling on that: Drop - An argument is dropped when it is not responded to. Arguments that are dropped are usually considered true for the remainder of the debate. You must respond to an argument once it is made, you cannot wait until the next round. [4] Since we're both new, I offer this: if my opponent leaves coherence unanswered, that should cost him dearly in the argument category. On the other hand if he addresses it now, then it should cost him the conduct category, while the argument category would be graded with no penalty. In the end, voters will decide using their best judgement. Good luck to my opponent, and thank you to our readers. Vote Pro! 1) http://en.wikipedia.org... 2) http://en.wikipedia.org... 3) http://en.wikipedia.org... 4) http://www.debate.org...