Mystery: What one cannot explain rationally.

There are three important and distinct points to be made about mysteries:

1. For every human being there are very many mysteries (if one is honest), since in fact there is not much one can explain rationally oneself, and what one can explain rationally oneself one can rarely explain fully.

This does not mean that there is no knowledge nor that one has no knowledge (everyone who knows a natural language in which he can pretentiously claim "I know I know nothing" in fact knows a whole lot about the use of language, and about how to impress people with oxymorons), but it does mean that one is finite and limited, and that such knowledge as one has is partial and fallible.

2. That such-and-such, whatever it may be, is in fact a mystery, or mostly a mystery, does not entail anything whatsoever, except that one cannot explain it rationally.

Specifically, especially in and around religion there is an awful amount of mystery-mongering that is both pretentious and fallacious. Nothing whatsoever follows for or against any deity from any mystery - whether it is the appearance of a white rabbit in a stage-magician's hat; the proper explanation of self-consciousness or life; the deepest problems in philosophy; or what is supposed to be the meaning of life - since nothing follows from what one cannot explain other than that one cannot explain it.

3. In religions many claims are made and said to be "mysterious" that are in fact plain nonsense, contradictory, or false.

Thus, the mystery of the Trinity - God is supposed to be three (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) - is not a mystery but a plain contradiction; likewise, the mystery of the virgin birth is not a mystery but a natural impossibility (especially of a boy, if one considers cloning); and so on for many more supposed religious "mysteries": These are not mysteries but contradictions, impossibilities, oxymorons or simple lies falsely renamed as "mysteries".

In short, the priests and clergy of religions have often tried to soften or falsify the contradictions inherent in their faiths by re-styling these contradictions as "mysteries". This is both a fallacy and dishonest.