NZ Skeptics Articles

Science > God

27th March 2023

In this week’s newsletter, I’ve published the text from a couple of oral submissions the NZ Skeptics and the Society for Science Based Healthcare (SBH) recently presented to MPs. One interesting part of this was a question asked of SBH, which allowed Daniel Ryan to detail some of the harms that Natural Health Products have caused in New Zealand. I’ve included Dan’s email, and the short but promising response he received. I’ve also written about my time after graduation from the Eastern Lightning online fellowship meetings and my entry into the Level 3 group, as well as my brief foray into its leadership.

Finally Bronwyn has written about Ray Comfort, the Kiwi evangelist that I’m sure a lot of New Zealanders will have heard of. I for one have read and watched quite a bit about his preaching (including through his movies and Way of the Master organisation), but never thought to look into how he got started on the evangelical circuit. His story is unbelievably fascinating - quite literally, as reading Bronwyn’s documenting of Ray’s claims makes me skeptical that he’s always told the truth about his past. Something about it just doesn’t feel right. I always find myself skeptical of people who have many “just so” stories where everything works out perfectly for them. Look out for part two of Bronwyn’s delve into Ray’s world soon.

Mark Honeychurch

Therapeutic Products Bill: Oral Submissions

Daniel Ryan - 27 March 2023

It's only been a couple of weeks since the closing of the Health Committee accepting submissions on their Therapeutic Products Bill consultation, but the committee have already been running follow-up oral submissions. We know that there were 16,549 submissions to the bill, as with the help of a work colleague I've been able to scrape all of the submissions. This is a pretty high number for a bill, but still dwarfed by the number of submissions for the Conversion Therapy Bill a couple of years ago - over 107,000 of them! I'm currently in the middle of trying to run an analysis of all the Therapeutic Products Bill submissions, and if there's anything interesting in there I may write an article soon about what I find.

Eastern Lightning: Step by Step Instructions

Mark Honeychurch - 27 March 2023

Eastern Lightning: Step by Step Instructions

In my last two articles about Eastern Lightning, I've documented both the central tenets of the religion that they have been trying to teach New Zealanders over the last few months in their Level 1 and 2 fellowship groups, and some of the tactics, such as love bombing, that they've been using outside of the fellowship time to keep members invested in attending the group. Immediately after finishing in the Level 2 group, I was moved to a new Facebook chat group called “_NZ gathering in Almighty God-(10pm Mon/ Wed/ Fri)_”. As you can see from the title there was some blessed relief here, with a reduction from nightly meetings to just three a week. Thank God!

Fundamentalist Exchange: The evangelical pipeline between New Zealand and the United States.

Bronwyn Rideout - 27 March 2023

Fundamentalist Exchange: The evangelical pipeline between New Zealand and the United States.

Finally, we've reached the end of this series profiling major evangelical and fundamentalist Christians and their connection to New Zealand, whether they are home grown (like Nancy Campbell) or viewed New Zealand as an ideal place to extend their reach (like Gothard and Botkin). While I still stand by my claim that Nancy Campbell is one of, if not the most, influential New Zealand writer, Ray Comfort is without a doubt the most influential Kiwi connected Christian. Ever.