Editor,
Regarding the alleged battery upon preacher Matt Bourgault, I relate entirely to both sides. Emotionally propped by my indoctrination as a hellfire Christian, I was a street preacher for years. Later, as a more emotionally stable agnostic with a Ph.D., I taught at Georgetown, the United States Naval Academy and the State University of New York.
During my hot-wired Christian years, I felt contempt for agnostics. Now, as an agnostic, I'm patient with hellfire Christians, since I've been there, done that and know there's no use arguing with their encapsulated view.
Robotic zealotry was what I emotionally needed when young. I'd attended UNM and almost failed - Christian fundamentalism is what emotionally centered and motivated me at that time, calming my mind for later academic achievement.
If I had been preaching on a UNM wall during my evangelistic period, with brow sweaty and neck veins thumping, no angry unsaved student could have reasoned with me or shouted me down, because I was saved. Saved from intelligent and sensible information, of course.
But those were just "worldly" things in my theologically saved mind-set.
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I've looked at Bourgault's tragic Web site proclaiming that six hurricanes in two years are God's judgment on Florida's loose living and "homos." Meteorologically mega-ignorant, yes, but one can't reason with, or teach valid science to, hotly indoctrinated firebrands.
What one can do, of course, is deny campus permits to spewers of Jew-hate, Islam-hate, gay-hate, etc. And students walking by can ignore and feel sorry for the tortured souls who find peace in numbing their minds with vitriolic hellfire superstition shouted into megaphones.
It's better to treat their unfortunate behavior with kindness, asking if they'd like a drink of water, or simply acting as if they aren't there. To engage them in harangues simply strokes their irrational fire and fuels their motivation, rewarding them for fantasizing that rational students are hate-filled personifications of evil.
When I pass raving street preachers on Venice Beach in California, I smile and suggest that they have a nice day. One of the Christian preachers there at the last Hare Krishna yearly celebration was dressed in a black-and-white cow suit with large pink udders, walking with his believers behind a Krishna consciousness, flower-covered wagon, shouting in his megaphone, "We're here to teach you the udder truth."
Just smile and wave at these well-meaning people - or simply ignore them.
Kent Ponder
Former UNM student
