This House Believes Ontology Necessitates God!

Pro devotes quite a bit of time claiming that I am strawmanning him yet fails to show where any of my errors are. I hate to waste time with this but I feel it necessary to get these points clarified before moving onto the more important arguments.Pro begins by alleging that my calling his argument a syllogism is a strawman. I fail to see how laying out 4 premises that lead to a conclusion is not a syllogism, and I more importantly fail to see why any of this matters.Pro claims that I am strawmanning his argument when I stated that he is using imagination to be synonymous with false. Pro however completely ignores the fact that I laid out a point by point argument to support my interpretation. Rather than to complain about it Pro should have spent time pointing out the error in my analysis which he did not even bother to address.Pro states that I was misrepresenting his argument when I talked about the necessary tie our experiences have with our understanding. Pros rebuttal however only addressed why he disagreed with my argument. Disagreeing with my argument does not mean that I misrepresented his.As far as the third law of thought argument goes, Pro did not read my point carefully. More on that later.OntologyPros detailed explanation of ontology is not relevant to this debate. It is a branch of philosophy and has nothing to do with empirical testing, therefore to describe it as “thought alone” is certainly accurate. Pro says I must prove that using thought alone is to not use known reality as a basis. No I don’t. The statement is self-evident because that is how we would define “using thought alone”. This is not an attack on reason. Reason is simply one tool we use to understand reality. The other… is reality. Pro claims I must prove this. Basic philosophical points do not need to be proven. If Pro rejects it he can explain why, but he can’t just sit there and say “prove it” if he doesn’t like what I have to say, otherwise I can just do the same thing to his entire argument.As far as Pros point on physics and mathematics, I really don’t get what he is trying to say. Physics and mathematics are proven the same way everything else is, by demonstration.ImaginationI think it is certainly time for Pro to provide a definition of “imagine” because whatever he is talking about does not seem consistent with English. Pro claims that imagination takes ideas and randomly joins them together to form false constructs. This is not true because it can also form true constructs. The truth of those constructs has nothing to do with it, imagination is when there is no basis in reality for them. In other words, something which is imagined can be true or false. I can for example imagine that I will win the lottery. The fact that I am imagining it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Idea of God/ God ImaginedPro seems to layout his argument in the simplest possible terms by stating: “If we can show that the idea of God exists, and it has not been imagined, then we win this debate”. There are two major problems here: 1. God is either a non-idea or can be imagined.In the last round I argued that Pros definition of God only told us what God is not. Pro responds by saying this can be done with anything and uses an apple in an attempt to illustrate. Pro completely misses the point. Yes, we can list things that an apple is not, but that does not define what an apple is. Saying an apple is not a vegetable, dairy product, or an herb does not accomplish that. By that definition I am also an apple. And even if you can rule out every other possibility of what an apple is not, then you still haven’t made any distinction between an apple and nothing. A Negative trait by definition does not tell you what something is, and without knowing what something is you cannot have an idea of it.On the other hand Pro can provide us with a definition that tells us what God is. I will correct myself in that Pro did give us a positive trait of God in his last round by referring to him as a being. But this is Pros dilemma here; as soon as God is defined by using positive traits we can now imagine him, which negates Pros premise 4. Calling him a being is a positive trait. It only has meaning if we know what a being is, in which case we must necessarily be able to imagine it. And this is what I find most bizarre about his point here. In round 1 Pro states: “we cannot pretend to imagine the idea of God or God in our minds, other than attributing to him an a posteriori form (Morgan Freeman).” How on earth can Pro argue that an idea can simultaneously exist in our cognition while we are unable to imagine it? He can’t, that is nonsensical.I still however maintain that God is a non-idea, because conceptualizing him requires us to encompass all of his traits as defined, which is not possible with negative traits such as those in our working definition. An idea that can’t be conceptualized is not an idea. And the only way we can conceptualize a non-idea is to fill in the blanks with things we know, aka imagine them as Pro’s Morgan Freeman point explains. Either way, it is either not an idea or can be imagined. And if it can be imagined then Pros argument that it was not imagined has no substantiation in this debate.2. Ontology alone necessitates that any idea of God is imagined. In order for God to qualify as not being imagined we must have some external experience with him, yet the resolution states that we can conclude his existence without external experience. Any idea of reality not based in external experience can literally be used as the definition of “imaginary”, which clearly fails as a means of concluding its existence necessary.The Third Law of ThoughtPro claims that I strawmanned his argument by referring to belief when I stated how the third law of thought cannot be used. I did not use the law to refute anything he said, it was a general statement to ensure that both Pro and the readers understand it properly. It was necessary for me to throw that clarification in because of Pros sloppy language. Pro stated “if I can disprove the negation, then the above my conclusion is correct”. However the word “proof” is necessarily tied to belief, since proving something requires that people believe it. This creates a middle ground where the readers can not accept the negation (making it disproven) while not accepting the positive assertion either, in other words no belief in either side. This should result in Pro losing since he has the burden of proof, but if this point is accepted as written then the burden is placed on me to prove the negation which is not my responsibility.This is why, as I stated, the law applies to reality not our beliefs. Pro seems baffled at this and I am not sure why. I am simply stating that the subject of the law is reality, beliefs are what result from proper use of it.SummaryNot much to say, none of Pros relevant arguments have been substantiated and his main argument seems to be self-contradictory.