[irrelig]And here we go … the talk with Leighton’s brother Sean ran a marathon 3+ hours, from which we have distilled the resulting two episodes. A quick summary: Sean repeatedly castigates us for not showing proper respect to ludicrous and patently untrue beliefs while simultaneously approving of his Church’s attempt to deprive homosexuals of basic human rights. He refuses to answer important, pertinent questions regarding his faith, blithely ignores reality, and even Godwins us at the end of the first episode. What I found most impressive is that he remained cheerfully impregnable to reason and logic all the way to the end.

Since we’ve missed a few weeks in the past, we figure it’s only fair to release both episodes at once. Have at them.

[irrelig] Get your 75 million year-old body thetans and past life negative engrams purged, disconnect from any PTSs, prepare to perform auditing procedure R2-45 on any SPs, and read your KSWs, because this episode is all about Scientology. And out of fear of further chastising emails from Leighton’s brother Sean, we treated this particular belief system with exactly the respect it deserves.

Which is to say, none at all.

[leighton]As there has been some interest in listeners asking Sean questions, and he has agreed, I would ask any out there interested in posing a question to do so by email. We have set up the recording session for Thursday, March 4th. Please have your questions to us by noon that day if you would like your question included in the discussion. Also, in posing your questions remember he has requested the topic remain firmly on the respecting of individual beliefs.

[chuck]Leighton’s older brother Sean has found our site and does not like what he sees. He has sent the following email to call us to repentance and to tell us to start treating other people’s beliefs with the respect they deserve. He has even agreed to come on the podcast to discuss this with us. He’s going to be our guest speaker for the month of March.

Sean wanted the full email exchange between himself and Leighton posted on our site, and I am happy to oblige. It’s lengthy, so I’ve tucked most of it away behind the fold. Read on and be enlightened. It should be a very interesting podcast.

Charley,
I tried to find a way to post this on your site but was unable to. Therefore I am sending it to you in hopes that you will post all of it and hopefully change the way you are doing things.

If the desire is to have me on your podcast to discuss this matter. I am willing but I will stick with this subject only.

[irrelig] The long wait is over … we return with an episode discussing the various arguments for the existence of God, including a new one given by Mormon Apostle Boyd K. Packer, who claims he got it directly from God himself. Join us as we trash the ontological, cosmological, kalam cosmological, and teleological arguments for God’s existence and offer a refutation of Packer’s pro-God argument with a dope counter-argument we got straight from our boy Satan.

In addition to the Mims Carter Skunk Dick of the Week (sponsored by the Bacon Gospels), this episode also features the debut of a new pilot episode screenplay, written by Leighton and myself, which we hope will be picked up by a major television network or motion picture studio. It’s called “Martyrman.”

Give it a listen here. And don’t worry, we’ll be back with the Scientology episode next week (hopefully).

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[irrelig]Episode #51 is where we talk about the LDS church’s penchant for fortune-telling, in the form of a “patriarchal blessing” typically given at age 14. This blessing lays out the future life of the recipient. Unsurprisingly, it usually says the teenager will grow up to be a good Mormon.

Well, we dug up Leighton’s patriarchal blessing and we assess its accuracy, as well as compare and contrast to a few other patriarchal blessings we found floating around on the internet. And here it is.

[irrelig]For our 50th podcast, who else could we have on but the guy who gave us our lowest iTunes review ever — our very own Mims Carter, of the Mims Carter Skunk Dick of the Week Award, which has only been won by Mims Carter. Mr. Carter takes us through his experiences as an out atheist in the most religious state in the Union, Mississippi. The discussion is wide-ranging as always and includes politics, family life, and Leighton’s nearly-always irrelevant experiences.

For those of you who can’t access US iTunes reviews, here is the text of Mims Carter’s review in its entirety:

Not Funny   ★★
by mims carter – Dec 17, 2009

A couple of snarky, immature young male atheists who take cheap shots at religious people and have fun accusing other snarky, immature young male atheist podcasters of being snarky, immature young male atheists. As with other atheist podcasts of this ilk, the only redeeming feature of this podcast is that they are atheists, and they occasionally interview someone with something to say. The podcast featuring tall penguin was actually informative when they let her talk. Fewer skunk dick jokes and more substance would be nice.

Catch the fireworks here.

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[irrelig]In this episode we discuss the rest of the story: how when Christians gained power in the Roman Empire, they took Christ’s teachings about being meek and turning the other cheek to heart, and immediately put the sword and torch to pagan temples, books, priests, and people in a persecution so widespread and thorough it put the Diocletian “Great Persecution” to shame.

Plus, we read reviews, discover who this week’s Skunk Dick is, and play a commercial for our sponsor(s). You can listen to it all here.

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[irrelig]For the 48th podcast, we look into the persecution of Christians by pagans in the first three centuries after Christ. How often were they persecuted? What was the extent of Imperial involvement? Was Christianity always illegal in the empire? What was the Christian reaction to their persecutions? And why were these meek and mild Christians being persecuted in the first place, in a world usually so tolerant of divergent religious beliefs?

The answer, of course, is obvious: Satan was behind it all.

[irrelig]Ahh, the 47th episode, in which we discuss Kent Hovind’s fabulously informative doctoral dissertation, for which he received his PhD in Christian Education from Patriot (Bible) University. Now, neither of us here at Irreligiosophy currently hold PhDs, so we were ill-prepared to tackle such a great work. Of course, that’s never stopped us before …

The results can be found here.