It is obvious that a medical doctor’s license does not protect patients from sexual abuse or unnecessary medical procedures; nor protect students from incompetent or predatory teachers; nor guarantee a reasonable-looking haircut from barbers; nor assure a fair, reasonable defense by attorneys; nor, but then you get the idea.

In the mid-400s, Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor from 408 to 450, made it a punitive offense for a man to teach the public without a state license; and soon such licenses were given only to “Christians.” Now that the Church was in control, they decided to keep the unbelievers out of teaching by requiring permission from the church-controlled government.

As early as 1534, the English clergy were forbidden to preach without a government license and John Bunyan got caught up in government machinery that tried to control preachers and teachers.

John Bunyan has been one of my major heroes all my adult life. But, I recently discovered that John, after spending more than 12 years in jail for preaching the Gospel, finally accepted a license to preach! While that was wrong in my opinion, it does not diminish Bunyan’s courageous stand against King Charles II and the king’s demand that John and other dissidents (those who disagree) not preach the Gospel. Preaching the Gospel was very costly to all except the Church of England preachers and even they did not have total freedom of conscience since they had to obey the King and Parliament regarding religious matters.

In the seventeenth century, all religious groups hated the Roman Catholics who like all dissidents met in homes. Everyone in England and Europe remembered the Inquisition where “the papists” mangled, mauled, and murdered hundreds of thousands of “heretics.” All the dissidents and the Church of England preachers agreed–“No popery, no popery!” Of course, everyone should have had freedom of conscience–Catholics, Anglicans, Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, and even the religious weirdos. Moreover, all the groups were against the Baptists because of their insistence on baptism by emersion of only those who had trusted Christ as Savior. No babies under any circumstance.

King Charles I had feuded, fussed, and fought with Parliament and ended up being beheaded in 1649 followed by Oliver Cromwell becoming Lord Protector until his death in 1658. Although a strict Puritan, Cromwell provided religious freedom for everyone. Into this religious mix, mess, and maelstrom walked two men who would make their mark on English history–a preacher and a king.

When Charles II restored the monarchy in 1660, he reneged on his promise of religious freedom he had made in his Declaration of Breda a few weeks earlier (a mistake I hope Trump does not make). The people had experienced about twenty years of freedom of worship but now nonconformist (Baptist, Presbyterian, Independent, etc.) services were banned, and ministers were rounded up and arrested. The major hero in this religious mix was a born-again tinker, a Baptist preacher named John Bunyan. The resultant clash was titanic.

Soon after his conversion, Bunyan began preaching in 1655 and was arrested in 1660 while preaching in an unapproved religious meeting (conventicle). He served a prison stretch until 1672 when he was released with other dissidents. He was jailed again for a few months in 1675.

The Act of Uniformity 1662 required every preacher to adhere to and accept the doctrine of the Church of England or leave the country. That included all preachers of the Church of England (many of them Puritans) and all the various independent groups. Everyone had to attend the Church of England regularly with fines, banishment, and then hanging for a third offense. (That would sure help one decide whether or not to sleep in on Sunday morning!) The act required all clergymen to use the Book of Common Prayer; consequently, about 2,000 Puritan clergymen were forced to resign. Some of them recanted while others became dissident preachers, others got other employment.

As to unbiblical ceremonies in the Church of England, Puritans (and all dissidents) objected to kneeling during the Lord’s Supper, the observation of holy days, the use of the surplice (outer garment worn by priests), and the signing of the cross in baptism.

The noose got tighter when the Conventicle Act 1664 became law forbidding more than five people, not members of the same family, to meet for worship. This was followed the next year by the Five Mile Act that forbade any preacher from coming within five miles of any incorporated town or their former place of abode. The noose was now tight and the preachers were standing on a very fragile, shaky platform.

The Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and other dissidents from the Church of England continued to meet surreptitiously in homes, barns, and abandoned buildings while the Quakers very bravely continued to meet openly. This was a time of persecution without parallel as Protestants (Anglicans) persecuted Protestants (Puritans and dissidents).

However, Charles and the Anglicans did not have it easy in hounding, hunting, and harassing the dissidents. In 1668, the Bawdy House Riots proved that sane citizens recognized the insanity of persecution of decent people. London crowds attacked brothels as they protested against a government which had tolerated prostitution while persecuting devout, principled preachers!

Present day parallels are numerous as the state asserts its authority to control religious colleges, license Christian counsellors, certify Christian teachers, regulate school curriculum, prohibit anti-homosexual regulations, restrict military chaplains, etc.

The modern state is as arrogant, asinine, and aggressive as King Charles II was and it’s time for principled Christians to resist to the point of jail.

Boys’ new book Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! was published recently by Barbwire Books; to get your copy, click here. An eBook edition is also available.

The recent news that the angry, aggressive, asinine atheist Richard Dawkins is now the “World’s Top Thinker” is further proof that the world has turned upside down. For centuries, the herd mentality has been to place far too much credibility in anyone who is known as an “expert.” Such a person is quickly given the desired accolades if he is a “doctor” or wears a white coat. All scientists are thought to be honest, honorable, even heroic; however, may I suggest that all New Atheists are hysterical, heretical, and harmful to everyone, especially children?

I challenge my readers to forget the hype and not believe Dawkins’ Press Releases and simply look at the facts. Is Dawkins a highly respected scientist or charlatan and fraud? Let the facts determine the answer. It should be remembered that a lie is still a lie if everyone believes it and the truth is still the truth is no one believes it.

I challenge my critics to read the books of Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists. They are deceptive, dangerous, dishonest, and dull. Very dull. Dick and his New Atheist buddies spend their days down at the Angry Atheist Association telling each other how clever they are and pinning metals on each other for their accomplishments in writing their banal books to bamboozle the hoi polloi.

All New Atheist authors make it very clear that their agenda is to remove children from the homes of parents who teach them Bible truth! Dawkins wrote, “We should work to free the children of the world from the religions which, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them.” The New Atheists all demand that children be removed from the theistic influence since, to the atheists, it is child abuse. I think the atheists’ books are literary abuse!

The “World’s Top Thinker” showed his confused, contradictory, and contrary thinking when he wrote, “The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.” So, I ask Dick, “Do you really mean to say that everything came from nothing?” He said, “literally” out of nothing. Dawkins and the New Atheists tell us that a cosmic egg floated around space and then, but wait a minute, Lucifer’s Lackeys are assuming way too much: where did space come from? And the cosmic egg? No answer. We are supposed to give them that, but I don’t give the dummies anything.

Atheists tell us that nothing created everything, and I fight the impulse to grab my sides and roll on the floor with laughter. After all, we must show some decorum in our discussion, don’t you agree?

Aristotle told us that “nothing” is what rocks dream about but New Atheists dream (more like hallucinate) about nothing creating not just something, but creating everything seen and not seen in the universe. Where did Dawkins find the cosmic egg? Maybe it was laid by a cosmic chicken! The cosmic egg, the size of a pinhead (no, I will restrain myself), exploded and from that explosion developed the well-ordered, massive, precise, awesome universe! No one tells us what caused the explosion and how the alleged results can be reconciled with scientific laws. Explosions don’t produce order but disorder–always. New Atheist ranting is dumb, dumber, and dumbest.

I document in my eBook The God Haters that Dawkins is a lackey, loser, and liar. He lied about a debate he had with a Jewish rabbi; he lied about his interview with a creationist film crew from Australia. He lied (or showed incredibly poor scholarship) about his quote of early church leader Tertullian. So the World’s Top Thinker is a world class liar.

America is in deep trouble when you realize there is a still a fool on every corner, a clown in every public office, and every village has not one but several idiots plus numerous twits, tyrants and totalitarians lounging down at the Angry Atheist Association. We used to laugh at them; now we are in a life and death struggle with them. Our children are in their sights, so that puts atheists in my sights.

The war is on for our religious freedom to teach our children what we believe. Dawkins, who is uninformed, unreliable, and uninteresting is leading the New Atheists Brigade into battle against us and they are as intolerant and vicious as the most rabid Inquisitor of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The battle rages between thinking theists and non thinking New Atheists and their leader is not the “World’s Top Thinker” but England’s little stinker.

Bring it on!

Copyright 2013, Don Boys, Ph.D.