There are a lot of people who are highly regarded in history but who also believed in astrology, so you shouldn't be too hard on it. Do you feel similarly about people who believe in various religions?
These people believed in astrology to varying degrees:
Winston Churchill
J.P. Morgan
Nancy Reagan
Theodore Roosevelt (even displayed his horoscope in the Oval Office)
This is just a small sample.
I can accept conspiracy theories and disbelieving the known consensus.
I just can't accept a person who, in the age where we know exactly how planets move and what they are, decided to believe they have correlation with psychology.
It's the worst. It shows the person doesn't even try to connect cause and effect in a meaningful way, and in astrology this is all there is to it. No epistemology. No logic. It's one thing to believe in unfalsifiable things, and another to believe in falsifiable things that we fully understand and have no causual relationship.
To a raised atheist all religions are not far removed from belief in Santa Claus. But to someone with religious people in the family cutting them off may come not as natural as of strangers with astrology brain.
I mean, here we are, talking about something that starts with those planetary bodies.
Either way, I don't see a huge epistemological problem with a person believing these things. They might be believing wrong things but at least they do it for reasonable reasons.
You need to distinguish between epistemology and logic. It's much more important to get your epistemology correctly than your logic. It's ok to be wrong with your reasoning, you can still have an intelligent discussion. But talking to a person without epistemology is like talking to the wall. You're playing chess and he's playing checkers.
If the other person doesn't epistemologically need cause and effect relationships to believe in something, and it doesn't matter to him, I can't have an intelligent discussion. I can't reason without cause and effect, and if it doesn't matter to the other person it's completely hopeless.
I come from a religious background, born and raised catholic, and even in our indoctrinating upbringing it was made clear that the new testament isn't eyewitness testimony. It's a written story of something someone said. Given the age of the material this is the best we're going to get, obviously, but it's not quite as clear cut as it might seem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament
" They were written between approximately 70 and 100 AD, and were the end-products of a long process of development; all are anonymous, and almost certainly none are the work of eyewitnesses."
Just because it doesn't support your _preferred_ narrative doesn't undermine the fact that it's effectively the most trustworthy source on damn near any topic including that one.
but plenty of Luke and Matthew underpin Christian ethics, and have been the justification for building schools, charities, hospitals, etc. for centuries.
people will hear what they want to hear, e.g. Loaves and Fishes vs. Angry Revaluation Jesus, but at least there is an attempt at altruism there.
Astrology has all of the woo woo mythology without attempting any sort of actual altruism, just inane categorization.
If you drop hallucinogens into water, it could be perceived to others that people would be getting drunk off water, which would be, in effect, turning water into wine. The story could have come from this, easily plausible.
When people say they "literally did so and so" do you freak out about calculating the possibilities of their specific mention or do you sit back and understand what parables, allegory, and stories are?
Besides, If you don't believe it really happened, what's the point of picking apart the story?
The world has forgotten to end a few times now.
Yes, you could say it's a metaphor, a symbolic vision or something else rather than something to be taken literally in religion, but the same could be said of astrology.
The irony of you letting that affect your mind is amusing.
This is literally the underlying context of the discussion
Faith comes in many forms, in any undertaking human are involved in including science, watch out!
Not to give astrology or any particular belief system any credit, but how can one ever truly say that we "fully" understand anything in this reality?
This is a highly fallible trait that allows "science" to become a belief system in and of itself.
Not all Hindus believe in astrology, but very many do, and within contemporary Hinduism it is very much mainstream belief. And many Hindus who believe in astrology would reject the idea of drawing any firm boundary between their astrological beliefs and the rest of their religion. [0]
Hinduism is not the only religion to promote astrology: it is also a very common thing in contemporary Western Neopaganism/Wicca/etc. While contemporary Christianity is (with rare exception) anti-astrology, it was much more accepting of it in the Middle Ages, even into the early modern period – "papal astrologer" was once a real job description.
[0] https://iskconeducationalservices.org/HoH/lifestyle/expressi...
However, the few times that anyone has tried to verify astrological predictions, it's turned out to be false.
But I guess ignoring all religious people in the world is simply impractical.
I disagree about your interpretation of burning of religious books - surely that's more to do with people getting angry about their beliefs and culture being deliberately insulted. Burning a flag doesn't get people angry because of the impotence of whatever grouping the flag represents - it's because it's a direct insult to the people who value what the flag represents.
If we get to the punishments, things were clearly handed swiftly in the Old Testament. The Biblical concept of Hell as we know it (the place of eternal punishment) didn't emerge until the New Testament as it was in a way redundant.
And come on, we know holy texts are full of things which are clearly wrong, in exactly the same way astrology is.
I can't think of any precise statements that are clear enough to be proved true or false. Usually holy texts have vague enough language that it's very much a case of interpretation. e.g. The Genesis creation story states that God created the universe in 6 days, but any attempt to demonstrate that it is false will have believers declaring that a "day" is not a precise measurement of time.
It reminds me somewhat of James Randi's debunking of psychic powers - despite people having witnessed miraculous feats of spoon bending etc. no-one could replicate it under controlled conditions.
The Bible is rather clear that God doesn't measure time like humans do.
"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."
2 Peter 3:8
And a day is a day, no matter how you try to spin it after a couple of thousand years of peddling nonsense to try to make the gravytrain go a little farther.
This is no different than the Jehova's witnesses changing their 'due date' whenever it doesn't work.
Or much different than the excuses science's fan base will trot out whenever it gets caught speaking untruthfully, like their Theory of "Everything" Motte and Bailey.
It seems humans have to worship something, and what they worship is usually what is pushed by the mainstream, and whatever it is will be defended aggressively.
Welcome to planet Earth, please enjoy your stay.
I don't have the slightest problem with modern science and it's reckoning of creation.
The universe started with light in both accounts.
First light was estimated to be about 240,000 to 300,000 years after the big bang, so I would hesitate to say that the universe started with light [1]. You could determine that the first "day" started 300,000 years or so after the big bang, but then that throws off the other timings of creation. This demonstrates how the bible isn't even precise enough to be proven wrong as the "day" can seem to mean whatever people want it to mean.
> I take it to mean the creation account is from God's perspective not ours.
This sounds to me almost like a get-out clause as presumably God's perspective can be interpreted to be anything you want and cannot be proven false (similar to how an invisible pink unicorn's perspective can never be proven false).
To say nothing of the fact that 2 Peter was written centuries (if not longer) after Genesis, and there's no evidence the Hebrews themselves interpreted the account that way. The existence of the Sabbath falling within a single week rather than multiple millennia suggests they interpreted the six day chronology as... six days.
And the context of that verse clearly describes time from the human perspective relative to God's promises. The author isn't making a declarative statement about the way God experiences time, but pointing out that God doesn't operate on human timescales. That God may lay plans that take a thousand years to unfold.
That particular retcon doesn't make Christians look any better, it actually makes them look even worse.
It is probably the most widespread social policy that had ever been spread by any religion.
You can look everywhere in the world, including the non judeo Christian parts, and see the work week with a day off implemented.
It is such an intuitive and effective policy that nearly everyone forgot where it came from - but back then, it took a lot of effort to get people on board with it.
So don't judge the merit of the story by whether it's physically how the world was created, but by how the message and the consequences it teaches the reader have changed the world.
Every time you have the weekend to look forward to, remember that without some people believing God created the world in 6 days, you would be working non stop, or without the same day as your family to stop and rest.
The OT did have a concept of Hell. It is called "Sheol"[1].
"Therefore Sheol enlarges its throat, and opens wide its enormous jaws, and down go Zion’s nobles and masses, her revelers and carousers!"
Isaiah 5:14
"As drought and heat consume the melting snow, so Sheol steals those who have sinned. "
Job 24:19
I could go on.
Predictions of that nature are usually just re-interpretations based on knowledge after the fact.
"Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children." Isaiah 66:8
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. U.S. President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation on the same day.[1]
[1] https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/creation-isra...
People in the 1930s weren't able to use the bible to predict that Israel would be created in a day in the next 20 years. There's also the doubt over how long a "day" is in the bible, so it seems more a case of it only being a prediction in hindsight.
There's a better critique here: https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/does-the-state-of-...
Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled....
It's related to why MBTI lasted so long as "science" because it proved many concrete predictions through overfitting and hand-waving away errors as statistical anomalies rather than the pigeonhole principle at work. There are still plenty of people that think it valid. Perhaps ironically, MBTI even seems to making a comeback among many of the same people that are flocking to Astrology. If you're going to live by one pigeonhole fallacy you might as well live by more than one, I suppose.
Ask any (mostly pre-industrial) farmer or sailor: the positions of the sun and the moon are profoundly influential to their day-to-day lives.
Even I, an urban, post-industrial home office laborer make meaningful changes to my activities depending on whether the sun is in the sky.
Some of the world's religions can start off from a basis of logic:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13752
> Feser’s formalization of this argument appears around page 35. It has 49 premises. I shit you not. Most of them are uncontroversial on some interpretation of the words he employs (that doesn’t mean they are credible on his chosen interpretation of those words, but I’ll charitably ignore that here), except one, Premise 41, where his whole argument breaks down and bites the dust: “the forms or patterns manifest in all the things [the substrate] causes…can exist either in the concrete way in which they exist in individual particular things, or in the abstract way in which they exist in the thoughts of an intellect.” This is a false dichotomy, otherwise known as a bifurcation fallacy. It’s simply not true that those are the only two options. And BTW, this Premise, is the same key premise (hereafter always hidden) in all five of his arguments. We can thus refute all of them, by simply refuting this single premise (more on that later).
> In an article at his blog, pop atheist writer Richard Carrier grandly claims to have “debunked!” (exclamation point in the original) Five Proofs of the Existence of God. It’s a bizarrely incompetent performance. To say that Carrier attacks straw men would be an insult to straw men, which usually bear at least a crude resemblance to the argument under consideration. They are also usually at least intelligible. By contrast, consider this paragraph from the beginning of Carrier’s discussion of the Aristotelian proof:
[…]
> As near as I can tell after reading and rereading those mind-numbingly obscure passages, what Carrier is criticizing is an argument that tries to show that God is the cause of the universe arising from nothing. And as near as I can tell, his objection is something to the effect that if we think carefully about what a “nothing-state” would be, we will see that that theistic conclusion isn’t warranted. Other scenarios, such as a multiverse scenario, are no less likely or even more likely. Of course, this has, again, absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what the Aristotelian proof actually says, and so Carrier’s objection would be completely irrelevant even if it were at all clear what that objection is. Carrier’s readers will learn as much about what my Aristotelian argument actually says as they would if they’d read an automotive repair manual instead. Only that would have been more lucid and interesting reading.
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/02/carrier-on-five-pro...
* Schmid, J.C. Stage One of the Aristotelian Proof: A Critical Appraisal. SOPHIA 60, 781–796 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00835-7
* https://philpapers.org/archive/SCHSOO-8.pdf
Which Feser responds to:
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2021/07/schmid-on-aristotel...
Also:
* Oppy, G. (2021). On stage one of Feser's ‘Aristotelian proof’. Religious Studies, 57(3), 491-502. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412519000568
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Oppy
Oppy and Feser had an online discussions / debates:
* Can We "Prove" that God Exists? | Graham Oppy vs Ed Feser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoVDutpB4Cw
* Are There Any Good Arguments for God? Ed Feser vs Graham Oppy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-80lQOlNOs
* After-Show Q&A with Graham Oppy & Ed Feser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoEGIfrJzEE
No, they do not. Aristotle's Argument from 'Motion':
1. Some things in the world are changing. (Observation)
2. Whatever is changing is being changed by another.[1] (Lemma 1)
3. There cannot be an infinite regress of instrumental changers.[2] (Lemma 2)
4. Therefore, there must be a changer that is not itself being changed by another.
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-and-radio...
Anyhow, I can't really find a decent answer in that blog - my understanding is that he hand-waves it away by declaring that it is beyond physics and thus can't be confirmed or denied by such. Not a satisfying answer to my mind and I consider that tower of logic to be on shaky ground.
He's been publicly writing (online) since 2008:
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2008/
At some point attacks on straw men gets tiring I guess.
Which is right, in a sense. The fallacy is to use that as a proof of his proposition even though it’s a non sequitur.
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-and-radio...
The book Aristotle's Revenge has "§5.2 Aristotle and quantum mechanics" as well per the table of contents (been a few years since I read it):
* https://www.editiones-scholasticae.de/artikel/aristotles-rev...
Whether or not God exists, religious people see fit to mesh their moral axioms with their understanding of God's teachings. Atheists suppose no such being to base their moral axioms on. To each their own, but those who find others intolerable will be hostile. We are humans living in a world we have created for ourselves.
This is like looking at the big bang and asking why caused it. If something caused it, why did it cause it when it did and not before or after? Is there even a before or after when discussing the cause of the big bang?
The answer is that is we don't know. We have no knowledge on what is before then, why did time start when it did, and if logic even applies to given the lack of time or the possibility of other dimensions of time that is harder for us than seeing in 4 spatial dimensions is.
There is also an issue with Lemma 2. Why can't there be an infinite tower going forever? Even if something caused the start of time, something had to exist before that. Suggesting a first event might be akin to suggesting a starting number.
At most, even if we ignore all these problems, you just proven a starting point exists. Nothing about the starting point, nothing to claim it is a deity, much less the Abrahamic one. The beginning could also just be the big bang, a starting point with no before.
Here's another take:
Everything is changing and being changed. There is no "first" because the universe is not linear. And ultimately there is no actual division between "changed" and "changer". There is just "change".
Obviously this God would bear no resemblance to any of the popular Abrahamic Gods.
Nonetheless, anyone who subscribes to the simulation hypothesis cannot realistically call themselves an Atheist, by definition.
I don't get the reasoning for this part. It seems analogous to, but even more absurd than looking at abstract art and observing that the artist had pneumonia.
My resources tell me that the simulation hypothesis stems from Nick Bostrom’s philosophical reasoning, not rooted in physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
I also think there is some math in general relativity that works out much better if we assume 3D space is actually the 3d-surface area equivalent of a 4d space (and not the 4d space time), which makes us more like a hologram of 4d space. But this is another one where I forget most of the details that actually matter.
These combine give us the hologram simulation that pops up in pop culture from time to time, but what you read about in any blog or news article has nothing to do with the actual math and science behind the theories/hypothesis/what ifs.
It’s not “the best” argument; it’s just a popular one mostly publicised by people who think they know quantum mechanics. I am sure there is some sampling bias, but I have never seen someone who knew a lot about Physics believing in it (quite a lot of them are religious, though, but mostly in a classical deist way).
> Space and time is quantized at the planck scale, which strongly suggests that our known universe is a simulation.
There is no proof whatsoever that “space and time is quantized at the Plank scale”. You can build thought experiments about this being the smallest distinguishable length because of black holes, but even that implies making quantum mechanics and general relativity work at scale about which we know nothing. And even that is a far cry from spacetime discretisation.
It’s exactly the same mechanism behind the creation of gods: at the time the most powerful things people knew were themselves and awesome natural events, so they imagined them that way. Now that we’re all about computers it is tempting to see them everywhere, but believing that it is the case because of some tenuous superficial similarities is a fallacy. In exactly the same way that von Neumann machines are poor models for a human brain even though on the surface they have similar functions.
-- C.S. Lewis
Most people act rationally and irrationally. So you can hold an irrational belief, i.e. that your religion is the One True Religion, and then take rational actions like going to church based on that irrational belief.
e.g. drugs can make you feel good, but is it rational to keep taking them until you are addicted?
By having personal experience(s) of things that cannot be explained in any other way?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun
By employing one's sense of logic?
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...
You are misusing logic in the same way. You are disconnecting it from its value in order to justify a belief in a larger power. This is neither logical or rational.
The entire idea that religion is rational or logical is one that's been pushed since the late enlightenment era upon realizing that you cannot control others through religion unless they believe that you are operating rationally on behalf of a larger power. This is the trick. It's very effective!
I have only met a few "true atheists" -- people who do not deeply believe in some narrative that provides meaning and exists outside of the material world.
Really?! That's definitely by viewpoint. I don't talk religion but in my encounters with other atheists, I haven't gotten the feeling that any believe there to be some narrative.
you mean, people who don't believe there's a god (theism is a belief in a god, not just any belief or even any religion)
that's what an atheist is (which is the same thing as a "true atheist", as long as we're making up phrases)
a good example of an atheistic belief is "you should be excellent to each other, because it sucks when people aren't like that to you" - no god required
Generally atheists claim to be skeptical of all religion and mysticism regardless of whether it claims a "creator god". If you want to be pedantic and say someone who believes in ghosts, but not God is still be an atheist, well ok.
My point is that almost all people hold unexamined beliefs as non-material and unscientific as any religion. Hence they are not inherently more rational.
> be excellent to each other
I think the rule you are describing is not well defined at all. Are you treating them well because it's right, or because it's a benefit to you? If it's just comfort, then it only makes sense when it's convenient for you, or likely to be reciprocated.
Should you do what makes other people feel good? Or what is actually good for them? After all, it "sucks" when people try to make you do things. How would you know when to violate your rule of being "excellent"?
is that true, though? As one myself, I'm not sure it is. Certainly doesn't seem true. But if you want to be pedantic and sophic, you can continue trying to redefine it
in fact, I've found that self-described "theists" and "atheists" are both smart enough to know that theism involves a god, not just any religion or spiritualism or mysticism or belief
> My point is that almost all people hold unexamined beliefs
your point seemed to be to conflate concepts like humanism (essentially, "be excellent to each other", hardly an "unexamined belief"), which don't require magic, to theism, which does - this point didn't work for the reasons described above: both may involve principles of one form or another, but only the latter is magical and supernatural, and thus less rational to believe true
if we're both on the same page there, we can move onto other topics, like:
> I think the rule you are describing is not well defined at all.
That's definitely not what humanism means.
No I don't think this conversation will lead anywhere. Goodbye.
it seems you have no point that isn't based on pedantry, arguing semantics, trying to redefine theism, or falsely and failingly conflating a non-magical concept with a magical belief
I would have liked for you to respond to the subject of my posts instead, but since you couldn't: bye, friend!
What? From where do we derive our knowledge of the natural world and universe? How do we know, for instance, that the Earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa? Are you implying that we don’t know that, or are you implying our knowledge of this fact is a divine gift?
Ok then let’s rephrase the statement to “Absent any sudden shifts in the gravitational field, 5N of force is not enough to bring a 1 kg sphere to escape velocity.” Science can prove that.
And if we can’t prove it, then we return to the question of rationality. When given an unknown, is it rational to assume anything about that unknown without verifiable evidence? I think not.
If there is no evidence either way, then it is only rational to reject any positive assertion. The reason is that negative assertions are infinitely more likely to be correct than positive assertions. As a motivating example, think of a number between 1 and 1,000. Now, which statement seems more likely to be true: “the number you thought of is 32” or “the number you thought of is not 32.” I have evidence of the number you thought of, but the negative assertion is much more likely.
Another way of thinking about it is this: each positive fact yields are near infinite number of negative facts. E.g. if you know a ball is green then you also know it’s not red and it’s not blue, etc. the converse isn’t true. When you know a negative fact, you learn very little. E.g. what else can you say after learning a ball is not blue.
Arguing deep topics with a few lines of text every few hours is no way to be persuaded. But it will all too easily confirm your current ideas simply because you will get tired of it and you will conclude that nobody has any valid arguments against your position. This is why you have to get really serious about it and study under people who have "been there and done that" already. You will have to take the time to go through the entire process it cannot be done online.
It is strange that Atheists immediately discount philophical, theological and other arguments. For example, personal experiences and accepting the testimony and authority of those you trust is perfectly rational. It's not fullproof but it's still rational to do so, because there are many sorts of things that we have to accept as true based on such evidence.
So, if we interpret astrology as something explanatory, and there is no strong rational basis for it, then that means it is unlike those religious traditions that are rationally defensible. If astrology is a practical art, specifically, if it makes predictions based on some correlation between the positions of the stars and planets and whatever else, and this correlation happens to hold, then astrology is a more or less predictive model. (The "whatever else" also matter, as you could call the science of tides a kind of natural astrology because the moon does in fact have an effect on the tides.)
(FWIW, the Catholic Church rejects astrology, not as some "competing" doctrine, but as a pseudo-science and a superstition [0].)
> (FWIW, the Catholic Church rejects astrology, not as some "competing" doctrine, but as a pseudo-science and a superstition [0].)
Russian Orthodox church also rejects astrology as a superstition, or rather manifestation of paganism which is a competing doctrine. It also blesses missiles with holy water.
This needs more solid arguments. As is, it’s obviously complete bollocks.
In my experience, when you get an individual in the right setting, there's a high likelihood you can get them to admit doubt in the reality of their own religion, upon which they may also state that they still "choose to believe" anyway because their religion gives them both a moral framework and a community.
Astrologists are usually the opposite. They start out by telling you something like "I don't know if I believe in any of it, but I find it interesting." However, upon further conversation revealing more mystical thinking, it becomes apparent that they do believe to at least a fair extent, but are just too embarrassed to reveal their belief until they know you won't act judgmental towards them.
On the face of it, yes, religions are (from my understanding) largely made up of beliefs that are just as non-scientific as astrology. The escape hatch that religions have is that they are founded on a question that is largely unprovable. What astrology is based on is a fraudulent attempt at answering questions through what should be demonstrable mechanisms, and it doesn't matter whether facts disprove every single assertion in front of their very own eyes. Hell, at least religions have largely managed to change their views on the age of the Earth and whether dinosaurs existed, even if they still get aspects of those facts wrong. Astrology doesn't adapt to new information at all.
For those reasons, I see Astrology, unlike most other religions, as a black hole of belief. If someone believes in it, I really do feel sorry for them, and I also have no interest in having a conversation with someone that irrational. Even flat-earthers, whose beliefs are just about as dumb as that of Astrology, are more interesting to talk to and will at least be able to display flawed reasoning. Astrology is about as irrational as it gets, and people whom I've known who believe in it usually are either set in their ways or are extremely gullible that you can convince them of practically anything.
Sorry, but the average religious scholar is at least 1000% smarter than Astrologists. I try to be even handed with everything, but I can't here. Astrology is just a trap.
You cannot control people while also pushing the limits of humanity, they are mutually exclusive. To ignore this is to ignore religious systems were always about control and order, not progress.
Islamic civilisation would have never existed without Islam the religion. Even if we suppose the Arabs might have expanded into an empire under someone other than Muhammad, the end result would have looked very different. Islam was the glue that held together an empire composed of many different ethnicities, cultures, languages, tribes; without Islam, they would not have had that glue.
> You cannot control people while also pushing the limits of humanity, they are mutually exclusive. To ignore this is to ignore religious systems were always about control and order, not progress.
The first few thousand years of human civilisations were all about power and control. They did a perfectly good job of pushing the then-existent limits of humanity despite lacking individualism. It is only as we get into the modern period that individualism began to produce real benefits (new ideas, science, technology); but without that earlier anti-individualism, it would never have had the economic foundation it needed to produce those benefits. Even in the modern period, the benefits of individualism have mainly been something pursued by the upper and middle classes, economically sustained by the exploitation of the working class and by colonialism.
We also really don't know what the future holds. The religious fundamentalism of the Puritans led to the founding of the English colony of Massachusetts; maybe decades or centuries from now, religious fundamentalists will end up playing a major role in colonising our solar system – they may have motivations to establish colonies that secular people lack.
I'm not aware of a single civilization where free-thinking turned a poor society into a prosperous one. It's always the other way around: free-thinking is a luxury enjoyed by the descendants of religious, orderly, and well-controlled people.
Religion pretty much always involves beliefs that are as easy to problematize epistemologically as astrology is, but there are real differences in the kinds of people who are into astrology or neopaganism and the kinds of people who are Catholics.
When a religion is established and dominant, a lot of people engage with it in a detached way just because it's expected of them. They 'believe' essentially by default. They submit themselves to certain absurd beliefs as part of the tradition, but not all of them (e.g., the existence and presence of demons, for many Christians) are operative in their lives. People who participate in religions in that way can be very rational in a slightly strange way, with exceptions carved out just for religion.
I don't see this with 'serious' (i.e., metaphysical realism about the supernatural) belief in woo, at least among people like that in my life.
But often as I encountered it, some individual is also too cute to be treated rudely. This is a bit of dilemma, really. Because if you share what you've learned, then no matter how respectful you tried to make it look, they might still switch to defense mode and spoil the feelings.
So, the real question is, if a really cute girl that you like smiling in front of you, and she asks your "star type" (or "constellation"), what would you really do at that spot?
(BTW, you probably don't want to answer G, because I guess it's not hot enough. I'll try A next time)
Yeah that's all dandy until they refuse to learn things because it's against doctrine, start restricting your bodily autonomy and freedoms and ultimately make learning things that disprove their illusions punishable.
That's an oxymoron because stupidity is never cute. If she appeared cute before saying that, she certainly wouldn't after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pceDfPLf2hw
Note: This is not an endorsement. It is just a pedantic refutation of your claim.
Doesn't that speak more about you than about them?
Highly intelligence (IQ wise) people have also been into astrology (and alchemy, magic, etc.).
>I can tolerate conspiracy theories, or aliens, or whacky religions, but astrology is just so dumb.
Perhaps that's more about having a crude model of what's rational?
Something doesn't have to follow physics to have utility (I mean, utility beyond "making astrologers money").
A less crude epistemology would focus on what makes astrology resilient and widespread throughout several millenia, and what kind of purposes it might serve, as opposed to focusing on whether its compatible with hard sciences, or the knee-jerk reaction that "it's because people are stupid".
I find your take on people who believe in Astrology condescending. I know intelligent and accomplished people who believe in Astrology. The explanation is very simple: they simply didn't think it through and keep checking Astrology predictions because they find them entertaining.
I also find them entertaining. That doesn’t mean I believe them.
> The explanation is very simple: they simply didn't think it through
Something I rely on to predict the future is the kind of thing I would want to think through. That’s particularly hard to believe of “intelligent people” when checking that it’s nonsense takes very little effort.
There may be an education-intelligence gap that explains why astrology is not evidently false to those people though.
Not every intelligent and capable person is a rationalist. I'd say that normal people reflect little about truths, instead relying on feelings and word of mouth. It got us to survive all the way to 2023, it's not such a terrible approach.
Astrology's biggest role is drawing a map of how people relate to each other, it's not primarily about making claims of the physical world.
I put it as opposed to astrology where we clearly know it's wrong, and the even worse part is that we had no reason to think it was true in the first place. It's just nonsense that came out of nothing, without even an attempt to ground itself with a reasonable connection to reality.
And yes, I am condenscending. If you go around believing random stuff and "simply doesn't think it through", that is precisely my problem with you. I'd rather a person who tries thinking and reaches the wrong conclusion than someone who "doesn't think it through". Such a person who doesn't even think should be more ashamed of himself than even the person who thinks wrongly.
You sound like a Taurus.
Let people enjoy things, the general socio-economic situation is already as shitty as one could imagine, asking people to be rational 100% of the time, with no beliefs, no nothing, is just a sign of socio-economic privilege.
Not the it's going to shake your beliefs in it. That's our difference I guess. When I'm wrong it's something I strive to fix, but when you're wrong, what do you do?
So believing random wrong things is something you do because you enjoy it? I believe things because I think they might be true, and you believe things because you enjoy believing them ?
What an alien (to me) epistemology.
So what do I need to do, convince you that thinking rationally is even more fun? Try reading Harry Potter and the methods of rationality.
Or doing math.
And how is socio economic related to this?
You're ironically just proving me right.
After all, science has undeniably caused more harm to the world than the belief in astrology.
I have been bored to death by flat earthers at parties before. If that’s their takeaway message, then so be it. There are many interesting people to meet everywhere anyway.
I personally choose to believe in UFOs, remote viewing, ghosts, and all manner of omen, just because it makes the world feel a little more mysterious in my every day life.
Yes, there is plenty of rational magic in physics and materialism, but none that I can encounter on a dark camping trip, or staying in a spooky house.
Nonsense can be fun!
Most of what we think we know as individuals is actually just a set of beliefs (often never tested) to which we heuristically assign some probability of truth. When you really start to dig yourself, you often discover that scientists, like any humans, are not immune to religiosity. They believe some thing is possible, or that some other thing is not. Those beliefs tend to color how the research is done. It also seeps into the culture of a society that has learned to so overly rely on "what the science says", that what it remains silent about is mistaken as untruths. Research must start with a hunch, a belief. But beliefs are often consensual and if the consensus is strong, it can be very difficult for a competing theory to hint at a possible different direction, even with supporting evidence. Our history books are full of examples. We set out to study a misunderstood phenomenon, but because there is a strong consensual belief that it must have certain properties, we approach our explorations with those premises as established truths. When we get stuck, we have to wait for an entire generation to die off to reorient the research (as Max Planck remarked).
Having observed the above in my own diggings into certain topics that (luckily) have some scientific documented intersects, I'm now reeducating myself to have less of the conditioned response of taking my own beliefs (e.g. astrology is probably BS) too seriously, when evaluating people's intelligence if they believe the opposite.
Applying the process of science to astrology causes the whole edifice to quickly crumble[1], that's why it can be dismissed out of hand. Not just because of what we think we know about the universe.
Questioning popular scientific beliefs in no way implies that things like astrology gain credibility. It is not a simple two way spectrum of truth.
> I can tolerate conspiracy theories, or aliens, or whacky religions, but astrology is just so dumb.
To be honest, I find your epistemological lapse even more confusing than believers in astrology. There's no significant epistemological difference between eg astrological claims and religious claims. You don't even have to limit yourself "whacky" religions; any of the mainstream ones will do.
Some of the smartest people we know, who gave us modern astronomy - Galileo, Kepler, et al - were into astrology.
I agree. One potential rub though is the time of year you're born impacts your relative age to your peers when entering school. This absolutely _would_ shift things subtly, but it has nothing to do with star patterns.
Astrology sign is an information preserving transformation on relative age to within a couple months of precision.
I think it's much more helpful to consider their beliefs in this area irrational or illogical rather than assume that this lack of logic applies universally to all of their knowledge.
Every single human that has ever lived has, at one point in time or another, held beliefs that are illogical and irrational. And nearly all of us still do hold such beliefs.
The thing that really annoys me are TV shows like "Indian Matchmaker" where they bring in a so-called Astrologer who can't even explain whether he uses the Western or the Vedic system. That's just insulting.
Which is also a fun comparison to make because the astrology symbols for planets directly relate to the old useless and outdated alchemical signs.
So yes, Astrology has some relevant historic interest, but it's so far detached from modern science that I think it is almost weird to bring up in that sort of context.
It's still available but all that's left are VHS transfers: https://youtu.be/EoBEruyOnSo
I guess what I'm really "on" about is how someone can visit a place like Stonehenge, and appreciate the precision of the ancient calendar systems, without being accused of supporting Bronze Age Druidism. But for some reason Astrology is held in a different category, subject to a special kind of opprobrium. I find that interesting in itself.
Also - Full Disclosure - I used to have fun with the "Astrolog" software for Linux and even wrote an XScreenSaver integration for it. It was just a way to have fun and break the ice with people. It's a well maintained project that's been around since the Web 1.0 days. You know, when it was easier to have quirky interests without being called out to explain yourself. Cheers. :)
There's nothing wrong with enjoying parts of it and appreciating how and why it was used historically.
There's of course opprobrium about teaching it in modern scientific situations such as (most) Planetarium lectures. Some of that is because Astrology accumulated so much psuedo-psychological/sociological baggage and many scientists I know don't want to touch that sort of mostly superstitious pigeonholing with a ten foot pole if they can avoid it.
But a lot of it is as simple as it is interesting in a history class. It's not science, it's not reflected in modern science. Wanting to put it into a science lecture or class is one of those "Teach the Controversy" things [1] (as I alluded to a few in the previous comment). There is no controversy, that science is formally and completely outdated. Teaching the "controversy" provides too much weight to an outmoded model that hasn't been viable scientifically in centuries. Teaching it next to the real science mistakenly implies that it may still be valid or useful scientifically. It lets people that religiously love something like the personality quiz aspects of Astrology pat themselves on the back for "believing in science" when its ties to modern science are historic at best. (It lets people that don't believe in scientific expertise yell "see, they are teaching that a controversy exists so clearly they have no idea and you shouldn't listen to experts".)
To return to your analogy, you can go to a place like Stonehenge and see/feel/smell the weight of history. A science classroom (including Planetariums) isn't supposed to be a history classroom or a library, and confusing the two hurts the goals and aims of science way more than it hurts history, in part because people can't see the weight of history in a science classroom. Similarly, too, it is hard to be accused of Bronze Age Druidism in modern times simply because no groups claim to be actively tied to Bronze Age Druidism. It's been centuries since most of them disappeared (or were slaughtered) or moved on to other beliefs. There are plenty of modern "New Age" people that actively claim to be deep believers in Astrology, especially all its "personality quiz" stuff. Astrology never went away.
Absolutely, love the quirky interests that you love. I had a phase in Middle School where I got deep into Astrology myself because it was a fun "LARP" of a sort to roleplay with friends, then that led to Tarot, and that led to a brief flirtation with card tricks and mentalism. (It may or may not have helped that all of those things are in relatively close proximity under the Dewey Decimal system.) I'd never take that sort of silly journey away from the next kid, even if I am worried about all the kids that never outgrow some of those phases. I do think the library is the better way to discover Astrology than a Planetarium, though.
I don't think this happens to anyone, in this day and age. Belief in astrology is driven by aesthetics, romanticism, and maybe an initially detached engagement with the practice that yields positive results. But people who take astrology seriously don't reason their way into it.
Probably everyone adopts unreasoned beliefs, of course. We don't explicitly think through every single idea that is or seems to be operative in our behavior. But in my experience, extremely intuitive people (who also tend to be spiritual, religious, of into some other form of woo) also tend not to filter or sanity check their intuitions by thinking them through explicitly. (Obviously anyone can do that, and everyone does sometimes. Some people just do it less often.) And they're also more likely to (explicitly) hold onto beliefs that they can logically acknowledge they have good reasons to doubt. They know they're something wrong with the belief, but their thought which identifies something wrong with it is subordinate to the feeling that something is essentially right about it. That feeling can and will shift, but usually in response to processes that are mostly invisible, or in response to direct experience.
People like this aren't stupid, imo, even though being close to them definitely involves moments where 'they're so stupid!' feels like the easiest way to write off frustrating behavior or communication problems. Generally, intuition-forward people do manage to live reasonably coherent lives and don't do dangerously irrational things. They're just extremely frustrating to communicate with for people on the opposite end of the spectrum, and not often directly responsive to rational appeals.
I have a few people like this in my life and they all have a lot of wonderful qualities. I'm glad they're in my life. But like you, I'm pretty confident that people like that would be bad fits for me as life partners, or even roommates.
You shouldn't, though. Belief in astrology is certainly irrational, but it's not incompatible with being intelligent. In fact, the more intelligent a person is, the higher the chance that they have at least some irrational belief, because it takes intelligence to weave together a plausible-sounding chain of reasoning for why the belief is true.
Broadly, belief in irrational things such as this are highly correlated with people being insecure, afraid, and/or feeling that they have little control over their lives. You can see the correlation in populations between how insecure the population is and belief in this sort of thing.
So, don't look at it as indicative of intelligence. It's an emotional/social thing, not a brainy thing.
I consider them beyond reason so I don't even try. If a person's logic and epistemology lead to him believing in astrology, it shows a deeper problem and I don't hope to have an intelligent discussion with them any more than I expect to have an intelligent discussion with GPT2 or with a talking parrot.
I can tolerate conspiracy theories, or aliens, or whacky religions, but astrology is just so dumb. I can't see an intelligent person ever falling for it. Hell I would probably consider a flat earther with a tinfoil hat more intelligent.