Clergyman: Blame evolution, not yourself, if you are unfaithful to your spouse!

I wouldn't have believed this if friend Regis Nicoll hadn't told me:

For the past six years, pastor-turned-evangelist Rev. Michael Dowd has been going from pulpit to pulpit preaching the gospel—no, not the good news of our salvation through Jesus Christ, but of our liberation and empowerment through Charles Darwin.

How’s that? The good Reverend explains: “[Darwin gives us] a far more empirical way of talking about human nature than through stories like the original sin.”

As the New York Times's Yudhijit Bhattacharjee writes, “It explains our frailties, our addictions, our infidelities and other moral deficiencies as byproducts of adaptation over billions of years. And that, [Dowd] says, has a potentially liberating effect: never mind guilt; once we understand our sinful ways, we can get past them and play a conscious role in the evolution of humanity.”

Consider Bob Miller, an octogenarian whose string of infidelities, decades ago, led to a divorce, just as he was ascending the corporate ladder. For years Miller struggled to understand his behavior and the forces behind it. Then, a Dowd crusade came to Miller’s church...

At which point, it seems, Bob discovered that it wasn't him, after all, who was in bed with other women, it was his body, his hormones, his drives.

Oh, and by the way, Regis notes,

Dowd calls his theological perspective “creatheistic.”

Would that be “cre-atheistic?” That seems right, considering his wife, whom he describes as his “mission partner," is an atheist.

Well, of course, there is always that Bible verse, "be yoked together with unbelievers". Oh no, wait ... it actually says ... uh, not ...

If this is coming soon to a church near you, suggest that they book a marriage support ministry instead.

Hat tip: David Rice