Eram Sum Ero.

Oremus Mare.

I believe in you.

January 31, 2025

Preface: The Balance Between Questions and Answers

Imagine you’re on a treasure hunt. You have a map, but you’re not sure if it’s real. Some people follow the map without question, trusting it will lead them to the prize. Others throw the map away, deciding to make their own path. But then, there’s another kind of person—the one who questions everything: Is the treasure real? What if the ground I’m standing on isn’t real? What if I’m not even real?

This isn’t a story about people who don’t believe in the treasure. It’s about people who get stuck in endless questioning, not because they’re curious, but because they’re afraid to believe anything, and this fear may lead to an uncontrollable addiction. This isn’t just about atheists. Anyone—whether they believe in God or notcan fall into this trap. It’s called hyper skepticism, and it’s like being trapped in a maze where every door leads to more doors, but never to an exit.

But not all doubt is bad. Healthy skepticism is like checking if your flashlight has batteries before you explore a dark cave—it’s smart. It helps us avoid mistakes and see clearly. Philosophers call this balance virtue epistemology—it means being wise in how you search for answers. This story is about what happens when people lose that balance and how the very thing they try to escape—God—ends up being the thing they can’t let go of.

I. Introduction: The Doubt That Never Ends

Have you ever had a loose tooth you couldn’t stop wiggling? At first, it’s kind of fun. But after a while, it gets annoying. You wiggle it so much that it hurts, but you just can’t stop.

That’s what hyper skepticism is like. Doubt, at first, is a good thing—it helps us find better answers. But when you can’t stop doubting, even when you’ve found a good answer, it becomes a problem. It’s like wiggling that tooth until you’ve got nothing left but pain.

Some people doubt everything. They don’t just ask, “Is this true?” They ask, “How can I even know anything is true? What if nothing is real?”

And even when they find answers, they keep pulling them apart, never satisfied, always looking for something more perfect.

But here’s the twist: people who doubt God the most—the ones who say He doesn’t exist—often spend the most time thinking about Him. They argue, they debate, they write books trying to disprove God. But in doing all of that, they’re actually stuck on God.

It’s like trying to forget about something by thinking about it all the time.

This story is about that paradox—how people who deny God can become addicted to doubting Him, and how this endless questioning leads not to freedom, but to feeling lost and empty. But don’t worry—there’a way out of this maze, and it starts with something simple: Truth.

For many, that’s a very reactionary word.