Learn English – Is ‘The reason is because …’ redundant

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[Source:]
The phrase "the reason is" implies a causal relationship between two events or states. For example, the reason that the wagon is red is that I painted it with red paint.
I could also say the wagon is red because I painted it.
CAUSE: I painted. EFFECT: it [the wagon] is red.

So … 3. “the reason is because,” …
[=>] 4. The cause of there being a reason is that I painted it. … 
[=] 5. “I painted the wagon and that is why it is red because I painted it.”

How does 3 => 4 => 5 ? Please show all steps and thought processes? I ask NOT about how, whether, or why this determiner phrase is claimed as redundant; I wish to justify its redundancy.

Afterword: Sorry for misleading, but I might've failed to ask my intended question. I was instead seeking an answer such as the following, from here, which user StoneyB kindly recommended:

In a similar vein, some claim that because because usually means something like “for the reason that”, you’re really saying “The reason is for the reason that”
when you say[:] the reason is because.

Best Answer

The construction The reason is because X has been upsetting pedants for about four generations now. Don't worry about it: it is a fixed phrase and beyond grammatical niggling. Millions of people use it every day, in every register, and writers of the very first rank have used it for at least four hundred years.

If you want a reasoned discussion from a recognized expert you may consult the blog Motivated Grammar written by Gabe Doyle of the Language and Cognition Lab at Stanford University:

A mild amount of redundancy improves the likelihood of the message being transmitted correctly. The problem is when there’s too much redundancy, slowing down the rate of communication. (A common problem in children’s conversations, for instance, or a boring person’s stories.) Using because instead of that here doesn’t slow anything down, though — aside from the couple hundred milliseconds the additional syllable might cost the speaker — so I’m pretty unsympathetic to this complaint as well.

But I beg you, abandon the effort to understand the use of words by replacing them with their etymologies and dictionary definitions. That's not how any language works; it's a dead end for a learner.

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