For our guest podcast this month, we have Reverend Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution and “evolutionary evangelist.” Reverend Dowd is an itinerant guest speaker who travels the country stumping for the marriage of evolution/naturalism and religion. Listen for the first half-hour as we circle each other warily, trying to feel out the other person’s viewpoints, and then having achieved a sense of the other’s worldview, we become more comfortable and can actually engage in a discussion in the second half hour rather than merely a Q & A session. Although we agree in large part, we do succeed in finding a few spots of disagreement here and again.

Reverend Dowd is a fascinating speaker whose unique perspective deserves a much wider audience. If you’re interested in doing some further reading, the first fifty pages of Thank God for Evolution is available at his website, and I’d highly recommend it. He is also available on Facebook and Twitter, and even has a blog!

For this episode, we discuss the prevalence of homosexual behaviors in the animal kingdom in response to fundagelical complaints that it is “unnatural.” We also talk about a 1997 attempt in a Texas county (please, suppress your shock and awe) to replace the word “hello” with “heaven-o” because of the wicked connotations of the traditional greeting.

And now, a picture of the two obviously gay penguins guilty of stealing eggs and replacing them with stones in an obvious attempt to recruit more homosexual penguins to their evil cause. Not an ounce of shame!

This week, for our 23rd episode, we provide help for those trying to get excommunicated from the LDS church. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to get kicked out of Mormon land, this podcast is for you. We also cover church discipline for lesser offenses, like “heavy petting” and getting a vasectomy.

Hopefully, this podcast will also help the LDS church finally excommunicate their wayward member Leighton.

EDIT: As a correction to the podcast, it was not LDS Apostle Boyd K. Packer who was caught telling lies, but LDS General Authority and motivational speaker Paul H. Dunn, who was outed by a BYU professor, whose teaching contract was terminated for his trouble. Dunn himself was never publicly disciplined.

In this episode, we go over Southern Baptist Reverend Wiley Drake’s interpretation of the modern relevance and usefulness of cursing one’s enemies. Rev Drake calls this “imprecatory prayer,” but that’s just because he’s too much of a pussy to call things what they really are.

Which also tells me that deep down inside, somewhere he might not even be consciously aware of, he’s a bit ashamed of what he’s doing. Listen here or at the podcast feed.

[leighton]This month Charley and I have come across Michael Dowd who, as explained by our last guest, has a fascinating perspective on evolution and religion. This adds up to possibly being our most intriguing guest podcast yet.

Michael Dowd is one of the most inspiring speakers in America today. He is the author of Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, which has been endorsed by 5 Nobel laureates and other leading scientists, as well as by religious leaders across the spectrum. He and his wife, Connie Barlow, a noted science writer, have spoken to more than a thousand groups since they launched their itinerant ministry in 2002.

Michael graduated with highest honors from Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri (affiliated with the Assemblies of God), where he received a B.A. in biblical studies and philosophy. He also graduated with honors from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now Palmer Seminary) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (affiliated with the American Baptist Church), where he earned a Master of Divinity degree. Rev. Dowd served as a United Church of Christ minister for nine years, pastoring churches in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Michigan. His 1991 book, EarthSpirit: A Handbook for Nurturing an Ecological Christianity (Twenty-Third Publications) was one of the first attempts to look appreciatively at traditional Christianity from the perspective of a modern cosmology.