Blue Collar Scientist

Nelly Vasquez-Salazar apparently had a traumatic experience early Monday morning. According to her story, a person wielding a knife came at her in the dead of night and attacked her. She fought back with her own knife, killing her assailant.

Legitimate case of self-defense? Proper use of deadly force in response to an imminent threat to life? Not quite. That was just the first story she told the authorities. The second story was a little bit different.

According to authorities, Nelly killed her six year old daughter by stabbing her eleven times. She did this because the six-year old was sleepwalking.

No, wait - that’s not quite right. It was because the six-year old was sleepwalking, and the mother thought she was possessed by the devil. Satan, Lucifer, or whatever name you give it. As reported by ABC:

“The first statement we received from the defendant was that it was an act of self-defense,” [Assistant State's Attorney Stephen] Scheller said. “After she made the statement to detectives, she later recanted it, made a second statement, which she admitted in fact she had stabbed her daughter multiple times about the body.”

Fortunately, the authorities aren’t granting her a free pass, as they do in so many religiously-motivated killings - they’re holding her in lieu of $5 million bond.

Sleepwalking is a sleep disorder, characterized by a lack of REM atonia, the component of sleep that normally prevents extensive and coordinated movement of the voluntary muscles during sleep. The treatments for the condition are pretty straightforward. For some people, antidepressants or benzodiazepines will do the trick, but the more typical response is to make the sleep environment safer - by using stair gates, practicing good sleep hygiene, and so forth.

Sleepwalking treated in this manner is not normally very dangerous - until you combine it with the toxic influence of religion, apparently. Anyone looking at this case objectively could not possibly conclude anything except that a mother has brutally killed her daughter because of her belief in a spirit - that has never been demonstrated to exist - that she also believes has powers - which have never been demonstrated to be possible - and that this not-known-to-exist spirit was inhabiting her daughter, and that this justified¹ the killing.

1. At least at the moment of the act, she must have believed this. [↩]

Over on Panda’s Thumb, there is a posting about the case of Nancey Murphy, a professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary. Dr. Murphy, an ordained minister in the Church of the Bretheren, opposes intelligent design, and she wrote an article critical of creationist Philip Johnson’s book, Darwin on Trial. She has said that intelligent design creationism is not only poor theology, but “so stupid, I don’t want to give them my time.”

For her trouble, Philip Johnson called up a trustee of Fuller and reportedly tried to have her fired.

“His tactic has always been to fight dirty when anyone attacks his ideas,” (Murphy) said. “For a long time afterward, I would tell reporters I don’t want to comment, and I don’t want you to say I don’t want to comment. I’m tired of being careful.”

According to the story, Johnson denies it:

Johnson denied he had tried to get Murphy fired. He said that he had spoken with a former trustee of the seminary who was himself upset with Murphy but that he was not responsible for any action taken against her.

Yeah, right. Both the trustee and Johnson were pissed off at Murphey but they didn’t talk about being pissed off at Murphy and nothing they said could have encouraged such persecution. Makes perfect sense.

Anyway, if you read down through the comments, you come to a very interesting list of people that creationists have harassed, gotten fired, threatened, or killed because of their understanding of evolution. (Yes, creationists have killed someone over evolution.) It kind of puts the lie to creationist Johnson’s further remarks:

“It’s the Darwinists who hold the power in academia and who threaten the professional status and livelihoods of anyone who disagrees,” Johnson said. “They feel to teach anything but their orthodoxy is an act of professional treason.”

Apparently, Johnson is having some trouble telling the truth. Here’s a working list of people fired, compromised, or killed by creationist nutbags (no claim is made that this list is complete, and I’d like to see some citations to sources, so maybe I’ll work on that for a future post):

2 professors fired, Bitterman (SW CC Iowa) and Bolyanatz (Wheaton)

1 persecuted unmercifully Richard Colling (Olivet)

1 attempted firing Murphy (Fuller Theological by Phillip Johnson IDist)

1 successful death threats, assaults harrasment Gwen Pearson (UT Permian)

1 state official fired Chris Comer (Texas)

1 assault, fired from dept. Chair Paul Mirecki (U. of Kansas)

1 killed, Rudi Boa, Biomedical Student (Scotland)

Death Threats Eric Pianka UT Austin and the Texas Academy of Science engineered by a hostile, bizarre IDist named Bill Dembski

Death Threats Michael Korn, fugitive from justice, towards the UC Boulder biology department and miscellaneous evolutionary biologists.

Will Expelled be talking about these cases? Right. Didn’t think so.

Edit to add: Link for Richard Colling.