Leo Igwe writes about the contribution of Christianity and Islam to modernizing Africa. Against the background of African superstitions, does adding European and Middle Eastern superstitions help?

You will be shocked to learn that no, it does not.

These two religions do not, in any way, constitute ‘modernising forces’ in Africa. They render it increasing difficult to question and challenge supernatural and paranormal claims. Christianity and Islam only add to the existing superstitions, substituting or rebranding magical narratives that already apply in African societies. The skeptics’ movement should make it part of its program to subject Christian and Islamic faith claims to critical evaluation, even at the risk of being accused of racism or islamophobia.

I don’t think bringing in Scientology or Buddhism would counter irrationality either. Let’s criticize all religions.

Yeah, I’m trying to reach YouTube atheists, so I guess that means I need to use their preferred medium, as unsuited as I am to it. So here I am, expressing my views about the awful people in my movement by staring uncomfortably into a camera.

Sargon of Akkad “won” his interview with Thomas Smith. I’ve only seen a few short clips (the con organizers are going to be selling the videos, so they were limiting recording), and it was deplorable. Carl Benjamin aka Sargon sat there with a smirk; Smith would try to confront him with something, like the time Benjamin dismissed a victim of sexual assault by declaring “I wouldn’t even rape you”; then Benjamin would say “Yeah!”, turn to the audience and wave his hand, and the place would erupt with cheers and laughter. He didn’t need to reply, he had a claque on hand to howl approval no matter what vileness was brought up, who would howl the louder the more vile the Sargon quote was.

The speakers/attendees who backed out before they got on stage were wise. This was a theater packed with giggling misogynists.

I also saw a small bit of the “Armoured Skeptic”. He stood on the stage reading from a handful of papers, and made absurd declarations, such as that adding social justice to atheism made it a religion, that there was a god of SJWs, etc., etc., etc. It was unprofessional and ridiculous.

I pity the well-meaning people who stuck it out. Sargon won by being more disgusting than reasonable people could tolerate. Remember that next time Mythicist Milwaukee puts on a conference — it will be only for the dregs of atheism.

Robin Ince has a few words about political correctness.

Political correctness means different things to different racists homophobes misogynists concerned citizens. For some, it is a mindless removal of offensive words based purely on doctrine, they are cancelling the racist jokes for no other reason than statue 8 paragraph C. Some people cannot believe you may not make homophobic jokes and quips about rapes because you’re playing it safe rather than because you’ve thought it through and, via a combination of empathy and reason, you’ve decided it may be a better night without those jokes. You haven’t banned those jokes, you’ve just come up with other ones.

This is why I think PC can be good for comedy. It makes you think about what you are saying and why you are saying it. You still have the freedom to say it, you just might have spent a little more time thinking why you are. The cost of free speech when well-used is to think about its value and what you want to use it for.

So true, not just for comedy, but for any kind of communication. If you aren’t thinking about your audience, you aren’t being effective. You can spit on a Bible in front of an audience of atheists, but if you’re trying to talk to a group of creationists, you’ll lose them immediately and they won’t bother listening to you. “Political correctness” is a bullshit term used to disparage something important: thoughtfulness and honest discussion. Complaining about political correctness just means you’re admitting that you have zero interest in listening to the other side.

Callie Wright interviews the guys who are putting on Mythcon. They’re terrible. Here’s the reason they justify inviting Carl Benjamin aka Sargon of Akkad to be a speaker there: he’s an entertainer. Atheist conferences need to bring in new, exciting speakers.

I’m just wondering what is entertaining about Carl Benjamin? They compare him to George Carlin and Sarah Silverman.

They also point out that attendance at atheist conferences is down, and we need to spark new interest, so they’re looking for novel voices in the entertainment industry. If they’re dredging the bottom of the barrel to find people, I don’t think that’s going to help stimulate interest.

Jesus. Benjamin is an “entertainer” now. Gosh. Let’s bring in “entertaining” Nazis to conferences, too.

I’m glad some people are skeptical about the so-called “sonic attacks” on the American embassy in Cuba. It’s absurd.

It’s also easily tested. If bad guys are pumping energy into embassy rooms with some kind of mysterious device, that’s testable. We’ve got wackaloons running around claiming they can detect non-existent ghosts with simple electronic gadgets — real physicists could easily place real recording devices that are sensitive to a wide range of frequencies in these rooms and get concrete evidence of a real phenomenon, if it exists. Why haven’t they? You’d think the first thing they would do, on suspecting that they’re getting zapped by sonic rays, is call up the NSA or the signal corps, and they’d stick a few widgets around and detect any anomalous signals.

Have they? If they have, we’d know and have specific measurements to pin the fault on something. If they haven’t, it means they’ve got nothing but ghosts. And ghosts don’t exist.

Or rather, when creationism is a symptom of profound ignorance that is also manifested in health care woo. It seems that Eric Hovind has been peddling “Vitamin B17” — a bit of quackery he inherited from his con artist father, Kent Hovind. He was recently warned by the FDA that he needs to stop selling it.

The name “Vitamin B17” is an example of lying with labels. It’s not a vitamin. It’s better known as amygdalin, or even more infamously, laetrile. It’s a fake cancer cure that does not work and has never worked. Here’s the summary of this compound from NIH:

• Laetrile is another name for the natural product amygdalin, which is a chemical constituent found in the pits of many fruits and in numerous plants.

• Hydrogen cyanide is thought to be the main anticancer compound formed from laetrile via in situ release.

• Laetrile was first used as a cancer treatment in Russia in 1845, and in the United States in the 1920s.

• Laetrile has shown little anticancer activity in animal studies and no anticancer activity in human clinical trials.

• The side effects associated with laetrile toxicity mirror the symptoms of cyanide poisoning, including liver damage, difficulty walking (caused by damaged nerves), fever, coma, and death.

• Laetrile is not approved for use in the United States.

• Inappropriate advertisement of laetrile as a cancer treatment has resulted in a U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigation that culminated in charges and conviction of one distributor.

Hovind has been criticized for selling snake oil before. All that’s happened is that he’s now a little more circumspect about making false claims about curing cancer with apricot pits, but he is still selling these useless products. In fact, that’s about all he sells in the “health” category on his site, with one addition…he’s selling an anti-vaccination book.

In this book you will read the findings of medical doctors and researchers who tell us that vaccinations are not only unsafe, but they actually work against our God given immune system.

It just goes to show that nothing a creationist says can be trusted, and that you shouldn’t be taking advice from any of the Hovinds on either science or health.