Is Cosmic Origin
Accountable?
God or Big Bang or whatever, any account of cosmic
origin must confront the Paradox of the First Cause; namely, what caused the
first cause? I can think of three possibilities: 1) there is no first cause,
for the chain of causation regresses to infinity: 2) there is a first cause,
and it is uncaused: 3) the first cause itself has a cause, so causation flows
in a loop. That is; either cosmos is eternal, or it arose from chaos, or it
arose from itself. All three possibilities are flawed: 1 is infinitely complex,
2 is chaotic, 3 is paradoxical.
People want a cosmic origin account to be simple, complete
and non-circular; but you can have only two of those three. Your account must
either reason forever, or stop for no reason, or reason in a circle; and in any
of these cases your account is of no account at all. Therefore cosmic origin is unaccountable! This
is a philosophical paradox, beyond the reach of science or religion to resolve.
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