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Astrology Apologetics

lpetrich

lpetrich

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Some of us may have seen various astrology apologetics, like astrology is the ancestor of astronomy and Johannes Kepler believed in astrology. I've also seen this one

Astra inclinant, non necessitant.
The stars incline, they do not compel.

New York Times Essay Calls for More Respect for Astrology – Friendly Atheist by Bo Gardiner, noting Opinion | Is Astrology Religion for Those of Us With No Religion? - The New York Times by Krista Burton.

After having trouble with an injured tailbone, she went to a New-Agey crystal store to find something that would heal that part of he body.
It took me 15 years as a lesbian to finally become a person who pays attention to whether Mercury is in retrograde, someone who is excited about the summer solstice on June 21, a person who reads her Chani Nicholas horoscope each week with bated breath.

This is the part of queer culture I used to mock the hardest. It has rubbed off on me, at last. And it seems I’m not alone. There has been a 40 percent increase in Google searches for “crystal healing” over the past four years.
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She speculates on what might be the case, and she mentions
Yet show me a larger group of people who’ve been more discarded by their childhood religions, or who’ve turned their backs on cultures, traditions and gods that don’t serve, love or want them as they are.
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Because many of the more conservative Xian churches are still rather homophobic.
And if something helps you during a time of stress in your life, it’s worth it — even if you suspect it might be turning you into a caricature of the kind of lesbian you swore you’d never be.
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A lot like religious apologetics.
Now, I’m not stupid. I may be a woo-woo, crystal-worshiping homosexual, but I know that a polished red rock is not going to heal my tailbone. It’s not going to bring my mom back either. It may not do a thing. But none of us know anything about anything, really. So why not be open to the possibility of hope?
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If it has the opposite effect, then what?
 
Christians also love that argument.

"We don't know everything, therefore I am justified in believing anything I want."

That's not how that works.

Yes, it's possible that all Irish-Americans were created yesterday by spell-casting pixies who also altered our history books and memories, but the fact that we don't know everything does not make this belief reasonable. The only thing that can make such a belief reasonable is the same thing that makes any belief reasonable: evidence.

"I don't know" is often the only honest answer, but it is not a valid reason to make things up. To do so is to commit an argument from ignorance fallacy.
 
Why not be open to a little hope?

Why go out and convince people to waste their time and money on something that has no basis in truth?

It is a harmless little lie that won’t cause harm. Astrology, will it ever go away?
 
Since we don't know everything I am free to believe a freight train is a figment of my imagination and I can stand on the tracks when one comes and nothing will happen.
 
There are two very good things about astrology.

1. They don't insist on inserting their beliefs in textbooks the way creationists do.

2. They do put forth testable statements (albeit falsified) the way creationists don't.
 
Jason Harvestdancer said:
There are two very good things about astrology.

1. They don't insist on inserting their beliefs in textbooks the way creationists do.

2. They do put forth testable statements (albeit falsified) the way creationists don't.
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1. There are not enough of them to become a forceful group.

2. Creationist claims are falsifiable. The Earth is not 6000 years old. Humans did not live with dinosaurs. Evolution is a real thing. There was no world encompassing flood.
 
Which astrology? Western? Hindu? Chinese? There are many versions of astrology, each different from the others. And always, new fangled astrologies invented by puzzlewit astrologers. Before the discovery of Neptune and Pluto, no notice of something obviously missing was noticed by the astrologers, After the discoveries of the planets, the astrology whizzes quickly added these to their systems. Astrologers steal their ephemerides from those danged old astronomers to create their precious charts. Physicist Dennis Rawlings noted many years ago that the plagerization of the standard astrology ephemeris had managed to screw up their version and garbled extensive parts of their ephemerides so their charts were all wrong, and nobody noticed!

Astrology is stupid.
 
lpetrich said:
Some of us may have seen various astrology apologetics, like astrology is the ancestor of astronomy and Johannes Kepler believed in astrology. I've also seen this one

Astra inclinant, non necessitant.
The stars incline, they do not compel.

New York Times Essay Calls for More Respect for Astrology – Friendly Atheist by Bo Gardiner, noting Opinion | Is Astrology Religion for Those of Us With No Religion? - The New York Times by Krista Burton.

After having trouble with an injured tailbone, she went to a New-Agey crystal store to find something that would heal that part of he body.


She speculates on what might be the case, and she mentions

Because many of the more conservative Xian churches are still rather homophobic.
And if something helps you during a time of stress in your life, it’s worth it — even if you suspect it might be turning you into a caricature of the kind of lesbian you swore you’d never be.
Click to expand...
A lot like religious apologetics.
Now, I’m not stupid. I may be a woo-woo, crystal-worshiping homosexual, but I know that a polished red rock is not going to heal my tailbone. It’s not going to bring my mom back either. It may not do a thing. But none of us know anything about anything, really. So why not be open to the possibility of hope?
Click to expand...
If it has the opposite effect, then what?
Click to expand...

http://whatstheharm.net/
 
All aboard for the woo woo choo choo.

I listened to someone on a cable business chanell claim there was a correlation between astrology and the stock market.

Nancy Reagan brought a personal astrologer into the White House for consultations.

Stevie Nicks is a self proclaimed witch.

There is a going astrology business for business leaders.

As to NYT, we know they are fake news...
 
Carl Sagan noted that every day in his daily newspaper, there was an astrology column, yet you'd be hard pressed to find even a weekly column about astronomy.

From his The Demon Haunted World:
But astrology, which has been with us for four thousand years or more, today seems more popular than ever. At least a quarter of all Americans, according to opinion polls, 'believe' in astrology. A third think Sun-sign astrology is 'scientific'. The fraction of schoolchildren believing in astrology rose from 40 per cent to 59 per cent between 1978 and 1984. There are perhaps ten times more astrologers than astronomers in the United States. In France there are more astrologers than Roman Catholic clergy.
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Don2 (Don1 Revised) said:
Jason Harvestdancer said:
There are two very good things about astrology.

1. They don't insist on inserting their beliefs in textbooks the way creationists do.

2. They do put forth testable statements (albeit falsified) the way creationists don't.
Click to expand...

1. There are not enough of them to become a forceful group.

2. Creationist claims are falsifiable. The Earth is not 6000 years old. Humans did not live with dinosaurs. Evolution is a real thing. There was no world encompassing flood.
Click to expand...

You've finally found a way to test "godidit"?
 
Anyone who believes in astrology must be Pisces.

As the inverse square law dictates that the influence of a body is massively greater when it is close, than when it is far away, it is trivial to show that a modern airliner flying over at 40,000 feet has more influence on the people below than the planet Jupiter. Therefore we can be confident that any person who casts a horoscope without consulting the airline schedules, as well as planetary positions, is a fraud.
 
bilby said:
Anyone who believes in astrology must be Pisces.

As the inverse square law dictates that the influence of a body is massively greater when it is close, than when it is far away, it is trivial to show that a modern airliner flying over at 40,000 feet has more influence on the people below than the planet Jupiter. Therefore we can be confident that any person who casts a horoscope without consulting the airline schedules, as well as planetary positions, is a fraud.
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Anyone who "casts" a horoscope is fraud...period.
 
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves"


What is generally called spirutualism in the USA traces back to a alte 19th century woman.

It appears in the early movies. Seances, fortune telling and the like. Magnum PI TV show was riddled with a supernatural thread, premonitions.

Charmed TV show. It is all over the place in culture. Harry Potter.n When I was a kid we played with a Ouija Board. Place your fingers on a pointer and let the spirits guide your fingers to letters spelling out words.
 
One funny thing about spiritualism in Sweden and Denmark is that New Agey people have started to use the same term over here. But "spiritualism" is already a Scandinavian word. It means being drunk and happy. I find this amusing. It comes from "spirit", the alcohol
 
In "defense" of astrology:

Your birth sign actually does have an effect in how you do in life.


The issue is school. We lump all kids born over the range of a year together in one grade in school but some of them will actually be more developed than others. This is a definite factor in sports but has some effect in general education also. Your birth sign is a proxy for how old you were when you entered school.

 
Loren Pechtel said:
In "defense" of astrology:

Your birth sign actually does have an effect in how you do in life.


The issue is school. We lump all kids born over the range of a year together in one grade in school but some of them will actually be more developed than others. This is a definite factor in sports but has some effect in general education also. Your birth sign is a proxy for how old you were when you entered school.

Click to expand...

Only if you forget (as Americans are prone to doing) that other countries exist, and do things differently.
 
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