The concepts of infinity and eternity, no beginning and no end, are among the disturbing and illusive concepts often associated with a discussion of god or the creator of it all (including the even more toxic contemplation of who created god). Competing with these unfathomable topics are the investigations and proofs of science though I don’t believe science has yet explained the evolution of self-generation and perpetuation (or what we commonly call life). The sobering question of it all is, What came before nothing?

Apeirophobia is a specific phobia characterized by an excessive and irrational fear of infinity, eternity, or endlessness. This can manifest as a fear of eternal life after death, a dread of an infinite future, or the unsettling realization of never-ending existence itself. The condition is linked to other existential fears like thanatophobia (fear of death) and chronophobia (fear of time), and may be an underlying symptom of anxiety disorders or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

People such as Thomas Paine who wrote the Age of Reason about 1793 recognized the important relationship between religion and politics.

IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign.

He states that soon after his publication of “Common Sense” (1776), he “saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion,” and that “man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God and no more.”

The following is an example of the critical nature of religion when it confronts government.

From the Old and New Testaments,’ they say, ‘we take only what is useful,’ mostly the moral teaching. … The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are the following:—All men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may be, are worth nothing. This idea of men’s equality the Dukhoborts (Quakers) have directed further, against the State authority. … Amongst themselves they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be contrary to their ideas.”

The current American agenda for government appears to be aligned with religion – though nothing approaching a pantheistic character. In matters pertaining to policy, fact and debate (such as politics in general) the choice of religion as a premise in a logical discussion is a safe bet because of its ambivalence. However, once religion of choice is adopted, it not only allows limitless scope to argument, if reasoned as a conclusion it affords merit to whatever are the blended themes of government of choice. Thus the subsequent historical earnestness for separation of state and religion. While the two are technically incompatible, the one (religion) enables the other (politics) to sustain itself in unimaginable ways (preposterous premises of argument). That is, to attach the government to an intellectually impossible concept such as religion is to seek identity from the invisible. Once the inductive leap is made from a false or deceitful premise, the conclusion is bound to become tainted and contaminated.

Because time itself began with the Big Bang, there was no “before” in the way we normally understand it. Asking what came before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole—a concept that lacks meaning within its own framework.

Employment of the inexhaustible fodder of religion permits the government to sustain similarly boundless theories, none of which has any more legitimacy than a clever debating ploy. Meanwhile in the interest of preserving what is retailed as reasonable, the audience of these emanations is persuaded to follow. Certainly the alignment freezes the question of what came before nothing; but it does so at the price of logic.