... weirdly, the ones who adopted the sternest and most terrible Old Testament moral
tone were the Modern Language Association types who believed that everything was
relative and that, for example, polygamy was as valid as monogamy. The friendliest
and most sincere welcome he'd gotten was from Scott, a chemistry professor, and
Laura, a pediatrician, who, after knowing Randy and Charlene for many years, had one
day divulged to Randy, in strict confidence, that, unbeknownst to the academic
community at large, they had been spiriting their three children off to church every
Sunday morning, and even had them all baptized.Randy and Amy had spent a full hour talking to Scott and Laura last night; they were
the only people who made any effort to make Amy feel welcome. Randy hadn't the
faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could
sense right away that, essentially that was not the issue because even if they
thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of
procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions.
To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy's fundamental metaphor
for just about everything), the post modern, politically correct atheists were like
people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex
computer system (viz, society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and
so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules
with a kind of neo Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any
deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a
church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand
everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How tos and README files,
providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in
other words, capable of displaying adaptability.
"Yo! Randy!" says America Shaftoe. "M.A. is honking at you." "Why?" Randy asks. He
looks in the rearview, sees a reflection of the ceiling of the Acura, and realizes he
is slouched way down in his seat. He sits up straight, and spots the Impala. "I
think it's because you're driving ten miles an hour," Amy says, "and M.A. likes to go
ninety." "Okay," Randy says, and, just as simple as that, pushes down on the
accelerator pedal and drives out of town forever.