"Doubts of such kind gnawed at the chaplain's lean, suffering insatiably. Was
there a single true faith, or a life after death? How many angels could dance
on the head of a pin, and with what matters did God occupy Himself in all the
infinite aeons before the Creation? Why was it necessaryto put a protective
seal on the brow of Cain if there were no other people to protect him from?
Did Adam and Eve produce daughters? These were the great, complex questions
of ontology that tormented him. Yet they never seemed nearly as crucial to
him as the question of kindness and good manners. He was pinched perspiringly
in the epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to
problems he was unwilling to dismiss as unsolvable. He was never without
misery, and never without hope."
-the chaplain again, pg 267, recorded 6/26/1999