The Paradox In Which all Men Believe

There is a paradox to the Christian faith which concerns the origins of our existence. The paradox consists of realizing that everything has a cause, hence our existence was created by God. But everything has a cause; Then God must have had a cause; So, really, that cause is God; And that intermediate “God” wasn’t really God.

We don’t talk like that. We say that God created our existence and that God simply is. He had no beginning and has no cause. He is self-existent.

Science, however, theorizes any number of ideas in which a natural existence can be the cause of itself. Hence, the infinite collapse and explosion of our universe in the big bang, or the multiverse theories.  In either case, existence, in which the universe collapses and explodes or in which the universe of the multiverse is created, can either be considered to have been already or “existence” and “universe” are considered one and so the existence simply is. Regardless, you can abstract, extrapolate, interpolate and extend what is further and further out and back but you must satisfy the law that all that is was caused. And that is the paradox. All things have a cause except the origins of what is.

One can see that this irrationality is actually the rationality claimed by modern thought.

I use here Christianity as the symbol for all religions, for the defining principle of all religion is faith, and Science as the symbol for rationality, at least the rationality modern thought has coined of it. It matters not that Christianity is different than Buddhism , but that modern thought differentiates itself from the religion because it perceives irrationality. It matters not that Science is not the only system of rational thought, but that we generally differentiate what is science and what is religion by considering one rational and one not. They represent the two halves of the great chasm separating man’s mind from himself.

Once you’ve gotten past the issue, of knowing the paradox  of whatever you think you know or believe in, you must rationally come to the conclusion that, because there is no reason for existence to be at all, there must be a cause of our existence. This cause, no matter how far back or how many iterations out you push this, must be final. This final cause has chosen to reveal itself not through natural test (our five senses; modern scientific inquiry), but rather through rational deduction. You must believe in a paradox to be reasonable. You must become irrational to become rational.

It is something significant to ponder that this ultimate thing should choose such an avenue of revelation.