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Annael
Immortal
Oct 24 2014, 7:35pm
Post #1 of 31
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Do you believe astrology is valid?
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The last couple of days I've found myself debating astrology with several "skeptic" friends of mine. It seems to be the one subject that really gets the skeptics riled up!
I'm currently reading "Cosmos and Psyche" by Rick Tarnas, and he has this to say:
"Astrology is the most uncomfortably beyond the prevailing boundary line, the most likely to evoke immediate scorn and derision, the most apt to be known more through its caricature in the popular media than through its serious research, journals, and scholarship. Above all, astrology is that perspective which most directly contradicts the long-established disenchanted and decentered cosmology that encompasses virtually all modern and postmodern experience [and] controverts the most fundamental assumptions of the modern mind. For just this reason, astrology has long been uncompromisingly opposed, often with vehement intensity, by most contemporary scientists. As they frequently point out, if astrology were in any sense valid, the very foundations of the modern world view would be placed in question.
What do you think?
(This post was edited by Altaira on Oct 25 2014, 7:29pm)
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BlackFox
Half-elven
Oct 24 2014, 7:48pm
Post #2 of 31
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Meaning I'm not a passionate supporter nor an ardent opposer.
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Arwen's daughter
Half-elven
Oct 24 2014, 8:09pm
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I don't believe that the stars dictate or predict our fate, but I also would never say "only the gullible/easily misled believe in it." Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of poll answers that add a judgement or opinion onto my response, though.
I have had my chart done and I know a little about how to do my chart myself. I also regularly read tarot cards for myself and others, with scary accuracy at times (I mean that literally). I've had my palm read, thrown the runes, and I compiled a school psychology project on the various methods and ideas behind fortune telling.
I don't believe in any sort of mystical force behind it. I do believe that it can be a useful tool for discussion or focus of thought. I'm not entirely sure where that would put me in the answers above.
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Donry
Tol Eressea
Oct 24 2014, 8:47pm
Post #4 of 31
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Never had charts done, but believe...
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I am a believer.....Monkees?
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DanielLB
Immortal
Oct 25 2014, 8:06am
Post #6 of 31
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I voted "it's nonsense", with one caveat ...
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I wouldn't want to suggest that those that do believe in it are gullible or easily misled.
It would be nice if there was actually some real science that was done with astrology. There have been studies that suggest that the phases of the moon can control people's behaviour - hospitals tend to be busier during a full moon. The solar system is like a gravitational dance between our sun and the rest of the planets. The earth is continually bombarded by elements from outside our planet. Even relatively small atmospheric pressure changes can induce headaches. It's undeniable that the position of the planets will effect the earth. I doubt that can effect someone's personality (fortune, luck, psyche etc) however.
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Annael
Immortal
Oct 25 2014, 3:19pm
Post #7 of 31
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yes, I should have put in another option
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I have had several discussions lately with what I must call advocates of "scientism" who actually used those words. But you're right, one can not believe in something without thinking poorly of those who do.
(Most of those people are not, in fact, scientists - real scientists remain open to the unproven.)
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Annael
Immortal
Oct 25 2014, 3:30pm
Post #8 of 31
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that that is why a certain element is so vehemently against astrology - that it is threatening to them.
Tarnas has written two books now about how the Western worldview changed/changes over time. The belief in science as the final authority instead of God came into play after Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton etc. But that didn't mean that everyone gave up believing in God - not at all! The majority of human beings still follow some religion. However, in civilian life as it were, the idea that science holds all the answers is the strongest factor.
In the second book, which I'm quoting here, he's actually arguing that the estrangement between the spiritual and the material, which he says was necessary so that science could blossom fully, is ending and that we're in the process of developing a new worldview as a collective that allows more of a rapprochement. One sign is the new openness by physicists to the idea - as revolutionary as the switch from the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe to an awareness that our planet is a teeny, tiny bit in a very large universe - is that physical laws may evolve - that the universe is not static at all, not a machine obeying rigid rules, but ever-changing. What makes it change, and why?
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Annael
Immortal
Oct 25 2014, 3:45pm
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It would be nice if there was actually some real science that was done with astrology.
That's actually what Tarnas attempts in "Cosmos and Psyche." He's not interested in which house your sun is in or that kind of thing; what he's found by doing correlational studies of real people's lives with their birth charts is that the aspects between planets in the chart - whether certain planets are next to each other, "opposing" each other, or "square" to each other in particular - do in fact correlate to how that person approaches life. He doesn't think of it as your fate or destiny, but rather influencing your style - not what you do, but how you do it.
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Eye's on Guard
Lorien
Oct 25 2014, 4:08pm
Post #10 of 31
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Thank you for the explanation!
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That helps me understand his point a lot better.
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Elizabeth
Half-elven
Oct 25 2014, 6:35pm
Post #11 of 31
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The gravitational effects or the planets are actually measurable.
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And they are extremely small. The moon obviously affects tides, but the other planets' influence is not enough to account for much.
Studies have been conducted on correlations between astrological profiles of individuals and their actual personalities and lives. People who have read their charts tend to internalize the predictions, but those who haven't don't correlate very well.
But I have often thought that the time of year when a person is born can have some effects that have little to do with the stars and planets. Babies born in summer, for example, will be learning to walk in warm weather, and will likely be outdoors more than those born in winter. That can affect their developing personalities. Astrology as we know it is a northern-hemisphere concept; I wonder how well it "applies" in the southern hemisphere?
(This post was edited by Elizabeth on Oct 25 2014, 6:40pm)
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Elizabeth
Half-elven
Oct 25 2014, 6:49pm
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It was conducted in England on 2,000 people born within minutes of each other and tracked for 40+ years. No discernible similarities were found.
It's not surprising, though, that astrology remains extremely popular. We all want some easy way of understanding ourselves and others, and to guide our actions.
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Magpie
Immortal
Oct 25 2014, 6:58pm
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There have been some studies on 'summer babies'. They are relatively younger when they enter school than those children born Oct-May (at least in US when children normally enter Kindergarten at age 5).
One study I read said that they tend to do well academically but they often socially lag behind their peers.
I flashed to my experiences throughout school. I started school at age 4 because my birthday just made the cut off date: Sept 30. By time I was a junior in high school, my closest friends were all sophomores... although they were all just a few months younger than me. Whereas most of my classmates were many months older than me.
I remembered getting upset easily and one classmate saying, "Don't be such a baby."
With those memories, I easily kept my late May and early Aug boys out of Kindergarten till they were 6. I think my oldest son esp. benefited from this.
How that could affect personality or other things measured by astrology' is unknown. But I can fairly easily buy that birth month can influence something.
I'm less convinced that alignment of planets and stars can. Make that not at all convinced. :-)
that said, I never mind telling people I'm a Libra.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Oct 25 2014, 6:59pm
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There was a time when astrology seemed reasonable...
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When it was thought that the Earth was the center of the Universe and all of Creation revolved around it, belief in astrology was perfectly understandable. We did not know that the stars were other suns many lightyears away (we didn't even have the concept of a lightyear). We did not even know that the Sun was the center of our solar system and that we and our sister planets all revolved around it.
Now, any serious belief in astrology seems as silly as still thinking that the world is flat or the notion that people would die of asphyxiation in a swiftly-moving train.
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Oct 25 2014, 6:59pm)
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sauget.diblosio
Tol Eressea
Oct 25 2014, 7:09pm
Post #15 of 31
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I beieve it's a valid form of entertainment,
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and is often a source of hilarity. But no, i do not take it seriously, and believe it's about as relevant to my life as fortune cookie predictions.
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Oct 25 2014, 11:34pm
Post #16 of 31
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No - what would be the mechanism
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Of influence or prediction? Can't see any reason whatsoever to believe in it.
On another note, from their perspective, it may well be being referred to as skeptics that has helped to get their goat!
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Bracegirdle
Valinor
Oct 26 2014, 2:36pm
Post #17 of 31
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What's your sign? "Eat at Joe's!"
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I recall (from somewhere) that the Amazing (or is it Great) Randi took a classroom of students, and got all their birthdates/places. A few days later he returned and handed each their chart.
Almost all the students agreed that “yes, this is me”.
He then had all the students pass their charts behind them. Hey, all charts were exactly the same…. 
Maybe we see what we want to see, and skim what is of no consequence?
BTW I’m a Sagittarian - honest, easy going and friendly 
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Annael
Immortal
Oct 26 2014, 3:54pm
Post #18 of 31
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the ones I know call themselves that.
As noted this topic has spontaneously arisen (that is, I didn't start it) in several conversations this week. It's brought home to me the difference between science and scientism. The working scientists I know, who are trained in an empirical mindset, seem more willing to say "well, if there's something to it we don't understand that yet, but who knows?" Although they do also profess a belief that if there IS something to it, it will turn out to be something that can be explained scientifically. The idea that there might be other ways of knowing things, intangible forces at work that can't be measured quantitatively, is too much of a stretch for them.
It isn't for me, but I realize I'm in a tiny minority in Western culture. And I wouldn't ever have questioned that mindset if I hadn't had several experiences that science can't explain. I'm a grounded, pragmatic person not given to flights of fancy or delusions, but several experiences that happened in broad daylight, were not of my seeking and totally unexpected (as well as contradicting my beliefs), and in some cases witnessed, have opened my mind to the idea that there might be . . . more to life.
And having done that I've found that life has become much richer and exciting, so I have no interest in rejecting this new way of looking at things. I don't want to go the way of Darwin, who complained later in life that
Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds … gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare…. Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music… I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did… My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
I mean, imagine losing one's delight in Tolkien!
(This post was edited by Annael on Oct 26 2014, 3:54pm)
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grammaboodawg
Immortal
Oct 26 2014, 4:15pm
Post #19 of 31
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In the span of my many winters
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I've enthusiastically experienced a LOT of alternates. I've learned there's a subtle but disturbing and at times powerful outcome with allowing "things" into your life, heart and consciousness. I've avoided inviting "things" in for a long time. Life is much simpler and safer since then ;)
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Oct 26 2014, 4:27pm
Post #20 of 31
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Only a little joke on the latter part.
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As to the rest I agree to the extent that I am fully of the view that it is impossible to disprove all of the various implications and aspects of astrology, so it isn't reasonable to claim that it is.
But the flipside is that the question I would ask of myself is why one should believe. Is there evidence of correlation or causation I.e. Is there something in it, as you say?
As far as I'm aware there is very little evidence for this from studies or from the world at large e.g. If a portion of the population were able with any increased accuracy to predict events surely we would expect to see differences in the lives of those have this advantage vs those who do not.
Beyond that I would be interested in how this might work but, for me, I don't get past the first question.
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Elizabeth
Half-elven
Oct 26 2014, 6:45pm
Post #21 of 31
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"Negative proofs" are generally not possible, and neither logic nor science expects them.
On the contrary, if you advance a hypothesis, it's up to you to prove it. In this context, advocates of astrology must, in order to be taken seriously, show there is a direct, consistent correlation between birth time and future events, in multiple cases, with no inconsistencies, and also demonstrate the mechanism that causes it. This has, in fact, been done with many scientific theories that are still debated by some people, including vaccination, evolution, and others. It has not been done with astrology.
That said, as I noted above, it's fun on a parlor-game level. I check my horoscope often, and enjoy telling people I'm a Leo, and I understand how Annael feels it has enriched her life. Enjoy! Just don't take it seriously.
(This post was edited by Elizabeth on Oct 26 2014, 6:46pm)
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Oct 26 2014, 8:04pm
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But yes that is what I was trying to say! I am happy to make the "negative proof" concession, in the interest of being accurate.
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Annael
Immortal
Oct 27 2014, 12:22am
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you are still saying that for anyone to take astrology seriously, it must meet the criteria that SCIENCE sets for proof.
My argument is that while science is a great way to learn about the physical world, it is not the method best suited for studying the intangible. I came to this conclusion not because of my metaphysical experiences, by the way, but after two years of grad school spent reading hundreds of papers by clinical psychologists studying human behavior, all of which concluded that they couldn't conclude anything because their results were "statistically insignificant." The overwhelming evidence, it seemed to me, was that there was a problem with the method itself. People - not their bodies, but their emotions and behavior, their dreams and intuitions, have to be studied another way: not as separate pieces of data.
Many philosophers of science have pointed out the problem that science can only study the things that CAN be studied scientifically.
One cannot even prove that an event recorded by historians - for example, the life and death of Jesus, or Socrates, or St. Augustine - happened using the scientific method. The evidence is all anecdotal and not reproducible.
And more: you can't prove that the scientific method is the only way to know truth. You can only assert your belief that it is.
(This post was edited by Annael on Oct 27 2014, 12:24am)
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Spriggan
Tol Eressea
Oct 27 2014, 12:42am
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I don't think "truth" is an inherently scientific, and especially not methodological, idea...
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So maybe that would take us some distance along a common path?
Something I would think was interesting as an opener is whether you / other "astrologists"(?) think astrology is true for everyone, or only for some?
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Annael
Immortal
Oct 27 2014, 12:53am
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I was reading a piece about the kinds of truth that can't be studied scientifically:
1) Existential Truth: Science cannot prove that you aren’t merely a brain in a jar being manipulated to think this is all actually happening. (Think of something like in “The Matrix.”) It also cannot prove that the world wasn’t created 5 minutes ago with the appearance of age (and with fake memories in your head, and half-digested food in your stomach, etc.). However it’s still rational to believe that our memories are true and that the world is real.
2) Moral Truth: Science cannot prove that rape is evil. While it is possible to demonstrate, for example, that there are negative physical or psychological effects of rape, there is no scientific test that can prove it is evil. Science can describe how the natural world is, but moral truth carries an “oughtness” (how things should be) about it that goes beyond what merely is.
3) Logical Truth: Consider the statement “Science is the only way to really know truth.” How could you prove that statement by science? It is actually self-refuting because there is no scientific test you could use to prove that it is true! Science cannot prove logic to be true because it assumes and requires logic in order for it to work.
4) Historical Truth: Science cannot prove that Barack Obama won the 2008 United States presidential election. There is no scientific test we could perform to prove it. We could have an investigation if we wanted to confirm that he did actually win, but the method for proving historical truths is different from testing scientific truths since historical truths are by nature non-repeatable.
5) Experiential Truth: Science cannot prove that your spouse loves you. When asked why so-and-so loves you, you may cite precedent (times when their behavior demonstrates their love for you) but this is a particular type of historical truth. There is no scientific test that can confirm a lifetime of experience of knowing a person.
I wouldn't ever argue that something is "true" for everyone. And I'm not convinced that in fact, much of astrology is valid - I've gone through life protesting that I am NOT at all like a "Capricorn" is supposed to be. I'm just fascinated by Tarnas's argument that certain people who are in the same fields and doing the same kind of work show similar aspects in their charts. Not where their sun or moon is, but where the planets are in relationship to each other.
Here's the kind of thing I wonder about: What if astrologers through the years have noticed something at work in our lives that is true, but they are wrong about the cause? It's not the planets but some other energy that is at work?
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