Bones, URLs and other dubious links

Just over a week ago Bronwyn and I, along with another couple of skeptics, visited parliament for the quarterly Prayers at Parliament event - the fourth now that I've attended. I swear that these events are becoming more partisan over time. Despite the organisers' claims that the meetings are cross-party, it seems that not only are the MPs who attend mostly National MPs (at this event it was just Simeon Brown), but the topics we're being asked to pray about are more overtly political, and there's a strong sense of what you should be praying for for each topic - unsurprisingly it aligns pretty well with the National party platform.

For this event, our three prayer tracks were 1) co-governance and three waters, 2) crime, police and gangs, and 3) an up-coming religious rally being run by Billy Graham's son, Franklin. Yep, Franklin Graham is coming to NZ in November, and I'll definitely be there at the event to see just how weird and wonderful it is. After each prayer track was outlined, we broke up into small groups of 5-6 to pray out loud about the topic within the group. Although it's still quite nerve wracking, I'm definitely getting better at praying out loud. Getting started with a prayer is easy (Dear Lord, etc, etc), but it's tough to keep the momentum going, and my brain runs out of ideas pretty quickly.

That was not the case for one woman who was in a prayer group with me for one of the tracks. She came from Destiny church, and not only did she see fit to pray for Brian Tamaki's “Man Up” program, she also prayed about how she's concerned that young people are being hypnotised and made to commit crimes against their will. I presume she's found this idea somewhere on the internet, but I have no idea what kind of conspiracy thinking this comes from. If anyone has heard of this idea before, please let me know what the heck it's all about!

In this week's newsletter, I look at the recent Supreme Court decision regarding Family First, and consider what it might mean for the NZ Skeptics. Bronwyn talks about bones used for medical training, where they come from, and what potential issues there are with sourcing them. And finally, after Craig chatted last week about the weak.link website I built recently, I try to explain a little more about why the website's needed and how it works (and if anyone has any suggestions for the site, or just wants to talk nerdy with me about it, please get in contact).