Witchcraft, hexes, and a bruja? Are you kidding me? What bad TV show just came to life in LA?
A woman kills her friend (a guy who sold snowcones in LA) because a witch told her he had placed a curse on her.
Yes, you read that right.
Skepticism. Critical thinking. Science. Embrace them folks, because they may literally save your life.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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February 2nd, 2007 at 2:10 pm
…Ah… uh… WHAT? I’m speechless. I’d like to know what kind of curse she thought it was.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
http://xkcd.com/c54.html
They have a t-shirt of this. You need one.
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I hope they get put away for a long, long time. People that stupid are a danger to society.
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Maybe we should ask Sylvia to communicate with him to find out if he really DID put a curse on her. Because then it would be self defense. Perhaps the prosecutor’s office will be in touch.
Then again prolly not/
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
[...] In my post earlier today I discussed some of why religious delusion is dangerous–here’s an other good example why we MUST get rid of magical, superstitious thinking! Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy has a link regarding a murder due to fear of a hex: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/02/02/bad-thinking-kills/ [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:07 pm
A year or two ago I read an article of an African witch doctor who developed an herbal potion to protect the wearer from speeding bullets, among other things. If I remember the story correctly, he smeared the mixture all over himself and asked someone to shoot him with a rifle. He’s dead now.
But I think he was at least practicing empiricism. A few tweaks to his method and he’d be in better stead (better stead than dead).
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Sadly my belief in Science and reason isn’t going to save me from fanatics should it come to that.
Unless I happen to be carrying a firearm. Hooray for Technology!
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:00 pm
I think Bryan D. just pointed out the Bad Thinking Skills in your advice BAB–I think a more direct connection would be: skepticism and critical thinking skills just keep you from killing other people for superstitious reasons.
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:14 pm
All of this reminds me of that Heavens Gate cult back in March 1997. How can sane people be fooled by insane superstitious leaders. Comet Hale-Bopp was such a great vision astronomically. Then, some weird Californian cult put a dark cloud over a celestial event.
When Hale-Bopp returns to earth all of those weird people will be obsolete. Nonetheless, in our present time you need to get a bullet proof vest if you have a reasonable mind.
In what year does Comet Hale-Bopp return?
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:43 pm
>> Unless I happen to be carrying a firearm. Hooray for Technology!
They don;t call them “equalizers” for nothing.
Phil, what bad TV show were you thinking about? Although I’m a skeptic, but I like some supernatual shows. Buffy and Medium come to mind.
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:50 pm
>>How can sane people be fooled by insane superstitious leaders.
Because, to be blunt, we live in a fairly miserable world crowded with fairly rotten people. It makes folks look for something beyond the ordinary. Something beyond the mud and the sweat and the blood and the s*** and the war and the pain.
Some people find it in the sciences. Others in art. Yet others in community service or reading or climbing Mount Everest or whatever. I found it in engineering *and* art (Everest is on my to do list
)
Others look for it in the realm of the supernatual.
This is why I take a kindler, gentler approach to skepticism, rather than the 2×4 to the head approach of, say, Penn & Teller. I spent 20 years of my life clinically depressed. Zoloft took care of that, but before those wonderful pills, I would look for enlightenment in all sorts of odd places.
So while I don’t condone moonbatness, I can sympathise.
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:54 pm
here’s an other good example why we MUST get rid of magical, superstitious thinking!
Are you intentionally channeling Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2?
I swear, this blog gets more extreme every day.
February 2nd, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I would hope this isn’t a case of a delusional schizophrenic, other mental illness, or someone trying an odd defense against a murder charge being confused with lack of critical thinking skills. That would be lack of critical thinking on the side of the skeptics.
February 2nd, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Ray Gray Says:
All of this reminds me of that Heavens Gate cult …
That example would be a lack of critical thinking.
February 2nd, 2007 at 8:41 pm
But then the story does have a description consistent with the lack of critical thinking since it was being related by a third person knowledgeable about the event but not necessarily involved.
After consulting a bruja, Godinez says, Gomez became convinced that the snow-cone peddler had put a bad spell on her for spurning his romantic advances. “The [witch doctor] told her that she was going to have a [car] accident,†testified Godinez. “She told her what date, what time — and she indeed had that accident.â€
February 2nd, 2007 at 8:59 pm
“I swear, this blog gets more extreme every day.”
When did not believing in witchcraft become considered extreme???
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Metempsychosis said: “I swear, this blog gets more extreme every day.”
Care to explain that in a bit more detail?
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Maybe he meant EXTREME! As in Wormhole-EXTREME!
February 3rd, 2007 at 5:11 am
If guns don’t kill people, but people kill people, then maybe stupid supersition didn’t kill this poor guy, but dumb women did.
Funny if that witchdoctor had been a little smarter she would have charged the lady to remove the curse rather than kill this guy.
It is amazing how lives can be wasted …
February 3rd, 2007 at 6:37 am
What I thought ws strange was that there was no mention in the article that the brujo who put the girl up to the murder was not charged with conspiracy
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:20 am
I have found that people too often think New Agey beliefs and the paranormal are harmless. I say they are just as dangerous as fundamentalist beliefs, except that at the present time fundamentalists have obvious political power.
I have spent years trying to correct this misperception and it generally goes nowhere. People just do not believe how prevalent it is. Yet, in my town, I have spiritualists running from me trying to get out of my vibrations.
If you are accused of a crime, would you like to be on a jury where 2/3 of the jury judges you by your astrological sign or because of body language that some New Agey seminar taught them as a means to judge people?
Also, would you like to be a victim of a crime or an injustice and know that people around you, who believe in the “law of attraction,” believe you brought it on yourself.
How well I remember the actor who played Bobby on the “Dallas” TV show years back. His parents, who ran a grocery out in Montana, were murdered in a robbery. Do you know what he, a praciticing Buddhist (not to blame all factions of Buddhist philosophy for this) said about it? “In my philosophy we believe that you attract these things to yourself. My parents put themselves in a situation where they were prone to robbery, therefore….” What were they supposed to do if that was their livelihood? I tell you, this is as dangerous as the Baptist or Pentecostal thinking you’re going to go to Hell because you haven’t accepted Christ.
People do not get it about this New Age stuff. I’m in a situation where I see how prevalent it is and I’m just about exasperated. I’m afraid this is why I’m having to distance myself from my Unitarian Universalist fellowship, which was once a colony of freethinkers. More and more UUs attract just these people with their magical thinking garbage. And they act on it, too. And Unity! They are far worse than UU; they are major propogators of this New Age nonsense.
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 am
Next perihelion of Hale-Bopp is forecast for 4380 AD .
Recall that in 374 BCE there were also many crazy cults, just as there are are today, though civilization has changed drastically.
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:45 am
Alan Hale, co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp has started the Earthrise Institute.
Check it out: http://www.earthriseinstitute.org/
February 3rd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I’m all for freedom of religious beliefs, but dude that’s just crazy. I like the TV show Charmed, and the Wicca religion is of marginal interest to me, but some people need to take a serious reality check.
February 3rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm
The problem with Wicca is that the naturalistic version of it has been overtaken by those who literally believe in–and believe they can work–magic.
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:33 pm
I think everyone missed the point in this article. Women are freaking dangerous. This poor guy attempts to show some romantic interest, and the woman flips her mind and goes on some witchcraft-believing, curse-ending murderous rampage.
—-That’s called dark humour people. Obviously I’m being facetious. In all seriousness though, the prevalence of unfounded beliefs in supernatural reasons have resulted in thousands of years of misery to innocent people. All one has to do is visit any museum of torture to see just what unfounded scientific beliefs are capable of. These beliefs may seem innocent, but can never be taken lightly.
It’s the Cosmic Irony of the situation that gets me though. A small seed of what we call life was autocatalyzed in some region of the Hadean Earth 4 billion years or so, and in that amount of time, life has evolved to where one form of it is constantly searching for the answers of origin, killing others over those answers, and basically destroying the very home that nurtured it and allowed it to evolve. As if the natural process wasn’t interesting enough, many people seem to want to explore their wild, unrooted imaginations, while ignoring the mysteries and wonder that surrounds their physical world. LOSERS
February 4th, 2007 at 4:47 am
The deceased broke one of the most important rules of life…
Don’t date crazy people.
February 4th, 2007 at 8:16 am
So, what about the charlatan who told Mendez to commit the murder?
February 4th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Rational vs irrational: two ways of viewing the universe. One has checks and balances, the other has essentially no limits to behavior.
One of the irrational approaches believes people can walk on red hot coals(oh, wait, people CAN walk on red hot coals)???
Ever wonder how the first person to do that came up with that insane idea?
For an animal to touch fire, it would have to be crazy, so where does that leave us???
I wonder how that first fire handler came to the empirical conclusion it was safe to pick up a burning branch.
What we mean here by magical/irrational thinking has to be carefully defined, else we run the risk of ignoring other ways of approaching the problem of knowing reality. Just because someone kills in the name of religion is no reason to ignore what religious belief may be trying to say. People also make RATIONAL decisions to kill, be it for money, power or vengence.
The individual in question THOUGHT her brujo was telling her the truth. Humans are SO trusting,,,in some ways that’s an admirable trait, in other ways,,,
I wonder if the real lesson here is TRUST NO ONE!!!
She COULD have asked the snow cone peddler if he had cursed her.
Gary 7
February 4th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
“Just because someone kills in the name of religion is no reason to ignore what religious belief may be trying to say.”
You’re absolutely right. There are actually much better reasons to ignore what religious belief is trying to say.
February 4th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
I’ll also put up a call for that bruja (witch doctor, whatever) to be investigated for conspiracy to commit murder. His/her advice seems at the very least to make him/her an accessory to the crime. I’m not saying that his/her advice exonerates the murderer, by the way.
Wish I knew more about criminal law so I could actually authoritatively speculate about what can really be done in a case like this…
February 5th, 2007 at 1:47 am
Phil:
I dare ya:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen/2007/01/the_week_of_science_challenge.php
February 5th, 2007 at 3:32 am
“I’ll also put up a call for that bruja (witch doctor, whatever) to be investigated for conspiracy to commit murder.”
Based on the information in the story, it would seem that the only evidence against the bruja is the word of an accused killer – hardly a strong case. Unless the witness heard the words directly, it would be inadmissible hearsay.
February 5th, 2007 at 6:25 am
I’m pretty sure Sam Waterston would go after the bruja as well.
The murderess’s beliefs aside, it would only take a small amount of empiracism to determine whether the poor snow-cone vendor was even capable of “putting a curse” on her. I guess what I’m saying is that it would seem logical to investigate what someone tells is true before propogating murder… you know, evidence.
Gyahh! It reminds me of gradeschool, my elementary was integrated with the special ed kids. and at recess all the jerks and bullys who liked to think of themselves as master manipulators as opposed to common thugs would find a special needs kid, and tell them that “So-and-So said something bad about you, why don’t you go over and hit them” and then they would revel in their masterwork as this poor special kid would then go over and enact their mayhem by punching Suzie in the face. They thought themselves even smarter when the special kid would take the wrap and they would get away scott free.
Now instead of Suzie getting punched or spit on, people are dieing, and instead of people with sub-par reasoning skills we are dealing with people with presumably average intellegence… at least people who are high enough functioning that society assumes they can manage on their own and don’t need constant supervision.
Now I’m thoroughly depressed. On the other side of the token, the reason this is so newsworthy is that this kind of stupidity thankfully only happens rarely.