3 March 2025
It's less than a week before my skeptical road trip to try to find the Kaimanawa wall, on the way up to Auckland to visit the new Mormon temple. We're looking forward to meeting up with people for brunch on Sunday, and we're also looking to see if there's anything weird and wonderful we can do on the Sunday afternoon or evening. Maybe a visit to see Brian Tamaki spout his vitriolic hatred would be fun?
3 February 2025
I'm a middle-aged guy who likes to spend time talking with Mormon missionaries, and by now I probably get visited about once every month or two by any new missionaries who turn up in the Porirua area. I had two missionaries visit me at the beginning of the new year, and another two just last week. I enjoy talking with them - both hearing their perspectives on their faith and the Mormon church, and trying to give them food for thought when it comes to some of the worse parts of their church organisation.
18 March 2024
Apologies for this week's newsletter being a little late - I was planning to finish it off last night, but I was hit by some weird medical issue where I had a horrible headache and ended up sleeping from 5pm to get rid of it.
30 October 2023
A couple of years ago, I was visited by a pair of kind, young Mormon missionaries. We spent a good hour or more chatting about their faith. Of course, being in the middle of a pandemic, missionaries had been unable to do their usual overseas stint, so the lads I had been visited by had come from Hamilton - not the most exciting.
30 October 2023
I'm happy to let everyone know that the result of the recent Jehovah's Witness court case has been released. This was the High Court case I visited on my lunch break a couple of weeks ago, where the JWs were trying to argue that they shouldn't be investigated as part of the government's current Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry. Thankfully the church has lost its case, and its argument that it doesn't “care” for its members was not enough to allow them to escape scrutiny. The Commission put out a short press statement after the decision was made public:
28 March 2022
Last week I had a couple of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) Missionaries visit me. They called me a few days in advance to ask if it was okay to come round, and then I totally forgot about our meeting until I received a call saying they were having problems finding my house on the street.
27 September 2015
A blood moon is a new name for a lunar eclipse, where the earth travels between the sun and the moon. The full moon turns red.
1 May 2015
Midsummer New Zealand. Driving to Jen and Camilo's house I pass two missionaries. On a hot and humid February afternoon in Palmerston North, the two handsome young Mormons dressed in immaculate white shirts breeze along on bikes. Their flawless presentation and purposeful demeanour is a contrast to the dusty, lethargic city around them. Pondering them as I drive by, I formulate another question for the people I am going to meet.
1 May 2010
At last year's NZ Skeptics conference Bob Brockie reflected on his career as a newspaper columnist and explained why he has no future with the Mormon Church.
1 November 2005
The Mormon church: anti-science and pro-repression. Still.
1 May 2004
Like scientists, historians use a dependable methodology to ensure their findings are reliable. Assertions of historical fact can properly be based only on empirical evidence. Historians then use their critical thinking skills to assess the trustworthiness of this data.
1 August 2003
A Waikato University lecturer has been named on a website for Latter-Day Saints as anti-mormon.
1 February 2003
A Feng Shui practitioner who died while on a life mastery course in Fiji was ready to leave his body, his widow believes. Stephanie Challis, pictured in the Nelson Mail (11 December 2002) smiling happily with her three children, told how her 41 year old husband Will had undergone a course of body cleansing which involved colonic hydrotherapy and drinking quantities of good quality water.
1 February 2002
When Raymond Richards included a lecture on the Mormon Church in his course on American history he ran foul of not only the Mormon community but also the University of Waikato heirarchy. He told his story at the NZ 2001 Skeptics' conference in Hamilton.
1 November 2001
It wasn't a dark and stormy night but a gaggle of skeptics got together recently to listen to ghost stories in Hamilton. Professional story teller Andrew Wright sent shivers down the groups' skeptical spines as they listened to his rendition of one of the oldest known horror stories, Lord Fox, a BlueBeard variation.