Astrology?

[Choobus]

Cap'n Awesome wrote

Astrology is such undeniable bullshit. Think about it this way, if what date you were born on gave you certain personality traits, then those people would probably gravitate towards certain careers. Hence we would see say, College professors with a tendancy to be born between certain dates. But this doesn't happen, at all with any career anywhere, even though certain personality traits do influence people's career.

Second I would note that all atrology predictions take advantage of peoples own egotism. Note that astrology barely list any negative characteristics, it's all "Pieces tend to be likely to be a Friendly, outgoing person though you form very close friendships, you are intelligent, bright and the ladies dig your giant cock." Meanwhile two million stupid assholes scratch their chins and smile smugly "Boy, amazing, that does sound like me." You'll never have a horoscope that says "Leo's are lazy, gullible bastards, you are shitty at keeping a job, beat your wife, but like to be self-righteous about the way other people live their lives."

I couldn't agree more. Well, maybe I could, but that's not the point. Perhaps if the horrorscopes did list negative personalities we would be better able to identify other people in the descriptions given. " Pieces tend to eschew personal hygeine and are generally selfish little turds..." HEy, that sounds just like you dad!

By the way, I strongly object to astrology being discussed in the science section. Can we not have a bullshit section?

Astrology is to astronomy as intelligent design is to evolution; also, as alchemy is to chemistry.

Also as phrenology is to neurology, and as magic is to physics.

Silentknight wrote

Also as phrenology is to neurology, and as magic is to physics.

Did you see the comic as well? Astrology, alchemy, phrenology.

[Choobus]

myst7426 wrote

Astrology is to astronomy as intelligent design is to evolution; also .

I disagree. Intelligent design is a bogus attempt to insert God into sceince while still retaining the undeniable usefulness of that science. Astrology, on the other hand has very little to do with the science of astronomy. (for example, they don't even use the correct relativistic corrections to calculate the positions of planets and stars as a function of time.)

I submit that astrology is to astronomy as ghostbusters are to reasearch physicists.

[a different tim]

I loooked at this a bit when I was studying. Historically what seems to be the case is that astrology comes with agriculture. Knowing when to plant, harvest etc was vitally important to those people, literally a matter of life and death. You got observations like "after this configuration of planets (e.g. a spring equinox) the weather gets warmer, so it's a good time to plant your crops", or "the phases of the moon seem to be in sync with the tides", and (remembering that nobody had a clue how any of this actually works) they move on, not unreasonably, to "the configuration of the planets causes the weather to get warmer" and "there is some magical connection between the moon and water" and more generally "configurations in the heavens affect events on the earth" and then to horoscopes and the rest of it.

It's easy to understand why people used to believe in astrology.

What I don't understand is why anyone believes in it now.

[calpurnpiso]

a different tim wrote:

"It's easy to understand why people used to believe in astrology.
What I don't understand is why anyone believes in it now. "

Because of religious-psychosis faith triggers!. Faith is always inverselly proportional to the knowledge and information of the person experiencing it. So, the more the faith the more the ignorance. Since humans are naturally lazy, they usually tend to accept dopamine inducing fantasies that down to earth facts of existence!. Existence is not pretty. One must constantly be reminded of life's end, be acosted by viruses, bacteria, accidents, put up with competitors, breathe air or die, and ultimatelly FACE SENILITY!!

So, humans resort to the panacea of Religious-psychosis which came with our evolution, to FORGET about REALITY and facts of life. Reality NEVER activates the dopamine and serotonin producing factories of our brains...but DELUSIONS/FANTASIEs always will!.

The reason about 80% of the world population are infected by the religious-psychosis anomaly...:)

[calpurnpiso]

One must realize that astrology gave raise to astronomy as alchemy to chemistry.
In ancient times science was ALWAYS accompanied by mythologies ( religious concepts) which filled the gaps of understanding. Even the great Aristarchos use them as did the gods Pythagoras, Imhotep and Archimedes.

People that believe in ancient religious delusions to be reality TODAY are either extremely ignorant or neurologically handicap. The believers are usually those unfortunate people infected by religious -psychosis...:cool:

[Choobus]

a different tim wrote

I loooked at this a bit when I was studying. Historically what seems to be the case is that astrology comes with agriculture. Knowing when to plant, harvest etc was vitally important to those people, literally a matter of life and death. You got observations like "after this configuration of planets (e.g. a spring equinox) the weather gets warmer, so it's a good time to plant your crops", or "the phases of the moon seem to be in sync with the tides", and (remembering that nobody had a clue how any of this actually works) they move on, not unreasonably, to "the configuration of the planets causes the weather to get warmer" and "there is some magical connection between the moon and water" and more generally "configurations in the heavens affect events on the earth" and then to horoscopes and the rest of it.

It's easy to understand why people used to believe in astrology.

What I don't understand is why anyone believes in it now.

do you think people really do believe it, or is it simple entertainment?

I too can see how you can believe it when you don't have a clue what's going on, but it's the antithesis of the scientific method to cling to these bleiefs in the face of what we now know. It's no different to believeing the sun goes round the earth.

I suspect that the majority of people into astrology are just having a laugh. Those who really believe it are probably the same stupid assgoblins who call Miss Cleo on a weekly basis.

[Kate]

It's very entertaining! I love to read a particularly vague horrorscope to the sheep in this office and spend all day pointing out stuff that happens that was OBVIOUSLY meant in the thing. A couple of days of that, then I can make up a particularly scary reading (they just like to hear me "read" them off the computer). Makes 'em skittish. heh heh heh......

[Choobus]

Kate wrote

It's very entertaining! I love to read a particularly vague horrorscope to the sheep in this office and spend all day pointing out stuff that happens that was OBVIOUSLY meant in the thing. A couple of days of that, then I can make up a particularly scary reading (they just like to hear me "read" them off the computer). Makes 'em skittish. heh heh heh......

maybe you have invented a new management style: Predictive management "don't make me predict you getting fired biyatch..."

[Kate]

:lol:


You'd think they'd have a clue after the interview.....

Sternwallow wrote

Astrology, as I understand it, was collected observations of nature, much like the shamans collected observations about the effects of plants and herbs. The shamans then used their memory and poor understanding of probability to ascribe a connection between people's birth and star patterns. Despite the fact that humans are intrinsically bad at estimating probabilities (note millions of Lotto players) and they draw correlations based on random data, Astrology did collect (poorly) many observations about the stars and the people. On this basis, I think Astrology, though it is quite wrong, had a greater chance of being true than Christianity which has no observations of nature and relies entirely on faith.

That was what I meant when I said that astrology is more likely to be true than Christianity. However, I never said that astrology is true. I started this thread because I viewed it as kind of interesting and took it as entertainment... I never took it seriously. People who actually take this seriously are just as crazy as the Christians, Muslims, etc. One thinks some random planet moving affects their insignificant and short lives, and one thinks some Invisible Sky Daddy is watching down on them and protecting them. Both need some kind of "purpose" to make them value their lives.

calpurnpiso wrote

One must realize that astrology gave raise to astronomy as alchemy to chemistry.
In ancient times science was ALWAYS accompanied by mythologies ( religious concepts) which filled the gaps of understanding. Even the great Aristarchos use them as did the gods Pythagoras, Imhotep and Archimedes.

People that believe in ancient religious delusions to be reality TODAY are either extremely ignorant or neurologically handicap. The believers are usually those unfortunate people infected by religious -psychosis...:cool:

Education solves everything...

http://www.answers.com/topic/religio...d-intelligence

Plus we need to stop parents from brainwashing their kids with religious bullshit when at an impressionable and gullible age. Religion cannot thrive on something logical.

If the United States would improve the education system, and if religion became child-abuse... religious psychosis would be cured. Unfortunately, this has next to no chance of happening...oh well.

Gottesleugner, you don't need to take anyone's word for astrology being wrong, it's easy to find out yourself. Just take an astrology column from yesterday, remove the sign names, and give it to someone who believes in astrology. Tell them to rate the predictions in order of how well they fit with what happened to that person yesterday. I don't know what will happen when you do it, but when I've done it the subjects weren't even close.