Belief is a form of knowledge, albeit one that is intellectual as apposed to experiential. Beliefs, whether justified or unjustified, will always remain uncertain. True knowledge can only be attained either by direct experience, or as a result of having followed a valid chain of deductive reasoning to its logical conclusion. Beliefs can only dislodged through the attainment of true knowledge by one of these two paths.

If the causes of an effect are that which is individually necessary and collectively sufficient to bring abut the existence of an effect, then so long as an effect exists, so too must its causes exists.

Consider the case of a clay pot. Generally speaking, the potter is thought to be the operative cause of the pot. However, if the potter dies, the pot does not necessarily cease to exist. In the Eastern tradition, the operative cause of the pot is its structure (form) and the constitutive cause is the clay (matter) from which it was fashioned. The potter is merely one of the myriad set of conditions that brought the form and matter into conjunction – for any potter may have informed the clay with the same structure. Consequently, so long as the matter and form remain in conjunction, the pot continues to exist.

So is there a way to just always simplify one's cognition of causal reality? — Josh Alfred

Indeed, there is way to think about causation without the logical inconsistencies that generally occur. For example, if a cause must exist before its effect, what then is it the cause of?

In the Eastern traditions, an effect is nothing other than the conjunction of its causes and so the two (causes and effect) arise, persist and perish simultaneously. In this causal system, there are two complementary kinds of causes, namely, the constitutive and the operative. Everything else in the chain of events that lead to the arising of an effect are merely the conditions which bring about the conjunction of these two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive causes.

Couldn't you speak about something you imagine? — Terrapin Station

In order to speak of anything you must first be able to say what that thing is; i.e., what its nature is, and if we are able to say 'what it is' then we cannot deny 'that it is'. We are well within our right to say that one thing partakes of an actual existence, while another partakes of only an imaginary existence, but we cannot deny that the imaginary thing does not partake of any mode of existence at all.

Hi Tim,

What precisely do you mean by the term 'existence'? It would seem to me that the term entails all that there is, for we can neither speak nor think of anything non-existent.

To speak or think of a thing it must have a nature, a set of intrinsic qualities or features (actual or imagined) that are essential to its being the kind of thing that it is. That which is non-existent is necessarily devoid of any qualities or features, be they intrinsic or otherwise.

It follows then that if God is existence itself, then God is the source of all that there is - past, present and future.

To understand Nagasena's argument you must first understand that things (subjects of discourse or thought) are, in reality, universes of discourse. That is to say, they are sets of defining characteristics that are bound together by a term or designation. The term 'chariot', for example, is: 'a two-wheeled horse-drawn battle car of ancient times used also in processions and races.' Those objects in the world that we call 'chariots' are so called only in virtue of the fact that they exhibit that set of characteristics which are expressed in the definition of the term.

Now, every universe of discourse comprises a both 'relation' and a set of things (called 'relata') between which that relation is said to hold, the relation being that which turns the many (relata) into one – hence the term 'universe' (literally 'turned into one'). Unlike the relata (wheels, axle, etc.), which are concrete entities, the relation which binds them is an abstract entity. Thus, if we take a chariot apart, the chariot is not to be found in any one of its parts or in the sum of its parts. It is only when the chariots parts are assembled in the appropriate manner, does the chariot come into being.

The ancient essentialists called these two aspect of a thing its 'form' (relation) and its 'matter' (relata). In Buddhist terms they were called its operative cause (relation) and constitutive cause (relata). That the relation (thing itself) is primal is evidenced by the fact that a 'universe' is also called a 'domain' which connotes the complementary concepts of a property-bearer (relation) and its properties (relata).
Hope you find this helpful.