Science vs. Civics vs. Rogue Fairy

I don't have much time today, so I'll give you a quote (a long quote) from one of my favorite books, Bad Monkeys, by Matt Ruff.

“You want me to say that Whitmer couldn't have been the Angel of Death, is that it?”

“Doesn't that seem like a reasonable conclusion?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was the Angel of Death.”

“Well if that's the case, how do you explain this last victim?”

“I don't.”

“You mean you can't.”

“It's a Nod problem,” she says.

“An odd problem?”

“A Nod problem. You know, the land of Nod, east of Eden, in the Bible?”

“I know the reference, but...”

“Cain kills his brother Abel," she says, "and God sets him wondering in the wilderness as a punishment. Cain ends up in Nod, where he settles and gets married. Which is a problem, logically, because Adam and Eve are supposed to be the first people on earth, and as far as we know, Cain and Abel are their only children. So where did this wife come from?

“Now, people who don't believe in the Bible tend to think the Nod problem is a big deal. Like for example, there was this one guy my mother dated one time for a couple months, Roger, who was this totally rabid atheist, and he used to pick on Phil-”

“Your brother was religious?” The doctor asks.

“In a little-boy kind of way. My mother was raised Lutheran, and even though she didn't really believe, she took us to church because she thought it would be good for us. I stopped going as soon as I was old enough to say no, but Phil really got into it. Said his prayers every day, the whole bit. So along comes Roger, and he's constantly razzing Phil about inconsistencies in the Scripture. 'Hey Phil, it says here in the Gospels that Judas hanged himself because he was sorry for betraying Christ. But it says in Acts that Judas wasn't sorry, and he died when his stomach exploded. How come there are two different versions of the story?' Or, 'Hey Phil, if all the disciples fell asleep in the garden of Gethsemane, how did Matthew know what Jesus said in his prayer?' The Nod problem, though, that was his favorite. 'Hey Phil, it says that God put a mark on Cain to warn other people not to harm him. What other people, Phil? His parents? The same ones who didn't listen when God told them not to eat the fruit?'”

“And how did Phil respond?”

“Well like I said before, Phil was a big-time nitpicker himself, so at first he kind of got into it. He tried to play along, only Roger wasn't playing. Roger would shoot down every explanation Phil came up with, until finally Phil had to admit that he didn't have an answer, and then Roger would say, 'So does that mean you're going to give up this Bible nonsense?' and Phil would say, 'No.' and Roger would say, 'That's because religion makes people stupid.'”

“And what did you think of that?”

“Oh, I definitely think religion makes people stupid," she says. "But Roger was still a hypocrite.”

“Why a hypocrite?”

“Because the Nod problem didn't have anything to do with him being an atheist. If the Bible had been perfectly consistent, he still wouldn't have believed a word of it. His mind was made up, and pointing out contradictions was just a way of being smug – and meanwhile, he completely missed where Phil was coming from.

“Phil did believe in the Bible. And part of believing that the Bible is true is believing that any problems in the text have solutions. Actually knowing what those solutions are isn't important. It's like, just because I can't tell you what killed the dinosaurs doesn't mean they aren't extinct. And so to Phil, looking at it from that perspective, it was Roger who was being unreasonable. So Phil didn't know where Cain's wife came from. So what?

“And it's the same with this.” She waves a hand at the papers in front of her. “Don't pretend this is some sort of objective inquiry for you. You've decided what you believe. All you're doing now is looking for a club to beat me with until I agree to see things your way.”

“Jane...”

“But that's not going to happen. I know my story is true. If something doesn't add up for you, we can discuss it, but don't try to blow a little discrepancy out of proportion. It's just a Nod problem.”

“Well, you're putting me in a difficult position,” the doctor says. “If you won't let me question the inconsistencies in your account-”

“You can question them. I just said we could discuss it.”

“But you're unwilling to entertain any real doubt.”

“Which makes us even,” she says. “Just like Phil and Roger.”