Street Preachers

If there’s one thing that annoys me it’s street preachers. They stand on street corners, in front of churches, shopping centres and generally any public place where they can be heard decrying civilization in general. Usually they are fairly skilled orators and to stand in public and talk normally should be admired. If it was about politics or decent causes then I think that’s all well and good but to make the populace feel guilty for whom and what they are is just wrong. Street preachers are skilled at this, quoting the bible, quoting their own deluded views and generally bringing doom and gloom on people unless they seek salvation in god. It’s an old trick of course, it preys on the weak minded but thankfully these days few stop and heed their words of fiction and stupidity.

When I was in Lincoln last week there was one such street preacher sounding off against medicine and technology, basically saying it doesn’t help us but god does. Maybe I should have put my faith in god and not medicine when I needed my eye or hip surgery rather than putting my faith in my fellow human being.

Ironically that very day I had bought the book ‘why I am not a christian by Bertrand Russell’ just before I had come across the street preacher. The book is comprised of several essays by Russell but contains his lecture delivered on March 6th 1927 at Battersea town hall which bears the same title of the above book. At this point I want to quote some of that essay which is very fundamental to how I think when it comes to organised religion.

‘Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand.’

And to conclude….

‘A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.’

Whilst I am not really against people having faith I am totally against people ramming their faith into you, telling you that you are a sinner and not pure, telling you that your life and decisions are wrong because this to me is against human free will and thinking, against what mankind has created for himself and is about. Whilst freedom of speech is quite acceptable in a large majority of the western world today you can’t help think that if these religious cranks had their way society would regress back to darker times when if you spoke against god you would have been burnt at the stake.