Is Cosmic Origin Accountable?

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.

          The unaccountability of cosmic origin resembles the “Munchausen Trilemma”:

         Any explanation can be at most two of:

         Finite; that is, some explanation explains all others;

         Complete; that is, every explanation is explained;

         Noncircular, that is, there are no explanatory loops.

 

          Finite, complete and noncircular explanation is called normality; an illusion created by paradox.