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.

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.

Wish I knew more about criminal law so I could actually authoritatively speculate about what can really be done in a case like this…

You’re absolutely right. There are actually much better reasons to ignore what religious belief is trying to say.

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

Don’t date crazy people.

—-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

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?

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.

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.

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 …

Care to explain that in a bit more detail?

When did not believing in witchcraft become considered extreme???

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.”

That example would be a lack of critical thinking.

Are you intentionally channeling Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2?

I swear, this blog gets more extreme every day.

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.

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.