Who hates astrology as much as I do?

[Hello_Kitty]

Along with psychics, crystals, tarot cards, feng shui, and all that other new-agey crap? It's not as dangerous as organized religion but it's even more annoying on a daily basis, IMHO. Astrology people get on my last nerve. At least the fundies will ask your permission before they proselytize. They'll say "Can I talk to you about Jesus?". I say no and they do it anyway but at least a token effort was made. Not so with the horoscopers. They just launch right into it. Typical exchange:

"So, what's your sign?"

I mumble something about not knowing and try to change the subject.

"Well, when's your birthday?"

I breathe deeply and reply November 21.

"Oh you're a Scorpio!! I knew it!! My sister/friend/second cousin's uncle by marriage is the same sign and you guys are SO MUCH ALIKE!! You really should let me do your charts and Jupiter is rising in your house of Mercury blah blah blah..."

I smile politely and tell them that I don't believe in astrology.

"Oh but there really is a lot to it." More protestations of the accuracy of goofy metaphysical psuedo-science ensue while it's clear that I've hurt their feelings by having the audacity to challenge their automatic assumption that everyone believes the same bullshit they do.

I've yet to have one of them ask if I actually believe in astrology prior to them engaging me into a conversation about it. It's offensive to me. It may seem like I'm making a big deal about it but I think it's incredibly disrespectful and rude. I have 2 girlfriends who are into that crap and know that I am not. They try to bring the subject up around me all the time. Like they're going convert me or something. I should also mention that both of them voted for Bush because they think that it was pre-destined that he was in office on 9-11. I asked one of them why no psychics and astrologers predicted the tragedy since these people are so good at predicting things like she's going to marry a guy named Carl. Sorry for the rant but I really sick of superstitious nuts all around me.

[Cleita]

1. I don't hate it because I think you should have an open

mind to the ways others think. I read the Tarot myself although I am still skeptical about it. What I do object to is the belief that one must follow this way or that way. Then it becomes a religion. Astrology is sometimes used by new age religious believers, but it really advocates no one religious belief.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Why have an open mind regarding nonsense?

Anyone can make up any rubbish at all and then foist it on the gullible. That doesn't mean we should have an open mind toward it.

[Cleita]

4. Because then, you are as narrow minded as they are.

Some stuff isn't rubbish. Back in the age of exploration, the conquerors of indigenous peoples threw out many of their cultural practices and knowledge and replaced them with our so-called superior western knowledge.

Not only did we alienate many cultures with our bluster but we overlooked a wealth of knowledge that these peoples had acquired in spite of superstitions or other ways of stating their knowledge that seemed superstitious. Now biologists are going back and looking at the medical practices of many indigenous cultures and discovering new medicines. Chinese medicine is getting a new look over. I believe someone might figure out what is really behind Feng Shui.

If it weren't for the astrologers who spent millenia mapping the stars and planets, we wouldn't have the science of Astronomy and sailors wouldn't have ventured out to sea.

I don't believe in the Bible, like a lot of Christians do, but I do believe there is a lot of knowledge there collected over millenia, not to mention, literature and history.

I don't believe that there is a father type of god out there that micro-manages our lives. We really are at the mercy of chaos but that doesn't mean there are a lot of things we don't know about that science will eventually reveal.

So just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Remember our five senses don't experience every truth that is out there. We have to find it and prove it. To summarily dismiss anything as rubbish, until you prove it is rubbish, is much like the scholars who condemned Gallileo for saying the earth was not the center of the universe.

If you are an athiest because you believe you are right, then you really are another religion, just as unbending and dogmatic as the others.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. You're confusing open-mindedness and gullibility

It's not narrow-minded to dismiss nonsense. Some stuff isn't rubbish, but astrology is rubbish.

[MelanieArt]

8. I completely agree with you.

Taking a closer look at metaphysics actually raises some pretty good questions. The legitimate questions may be buried in superstition, but they are there.

For example, how does a Ouija board work? By asking this question, we can learn a lot more about the subconscious mind, and the body's ideomotor response. By dismissing it as garbage before taking a closer look you could miss out on researching a pretty amazing aspect of the human mind.

I personally read Tarot cards from time to time. I believe it's a great tool for more direct communication with the subconscious mind, and exploration using the subconscious' favorite language: symbolism.

Just as religion attempts to answer legitimate scientific questions with superstition, the same applies to the so called "paranormal", the legitimate questions there, however, haven't been given as much attention by scientific minds.

[Modem Butterfly]

15. Isn't the greater question "Why do people believe silly things?" NT

[Violet_Crumble]

12. Uh, but astrology really is silly nonsense...

I do believe in being open-minded, but not so much that my brain leaks out and turns me into some new-agey wankerette...

Violet...

[Modem Butterfly]

2. Astrology is just bullshit

It's no stupider than any other religion, IMHO. Of course, maybe I feel that way because I'm a Capricorn.

:evilgrin:

My mom's into all that new-age crap. To me, it's all a big waste of time and energy, and that's a human fucking shame.

[Kolesar]

5. What's your sign?

Oh, that's my favorite movie, too!
What are you doing Saturday night? :hi:

Anyway, I think people who call themselves witches are pretty funny. DU has a few.

[Behind the Aegis]

17. Out of curiosity

Why do you think it is funny that people call themselves witches?

[Biased Liberal Media]

6. It doesn't bother me and it's not my thing...but

I do believe in karma, I believe that our souls can be reincarnated in newly born bodies, and I believe our souls go to some place and meet up with others after our physical body dies. Maybe it's weird for an Atheist, but that's what I believe in.

I dont buy any of the psychic crap at all. I was given a reading by a supposed online psychic back in early October (thought what the hell, it was free and I'd like to see if she was a "real" psychic). She says there's going to be a surprise for us in Christmas. ROFLMAO. I'll see if that really happens, but I ain't holding my breath.

[BlueHandDuo]

28. It's not hard to predict a surprise...

...'cause all that means is that you don't already know what's going to happen! Duh! I get surprised in some way every day.

And I don't believe in souls, either. I do think it's weird for an atheist to believe in an afterlife.

[geomon666]

9. I don't hate it...

in fact I wear a scorpion around my neck, not because I believe in it (I don't) but because I like scorpions and the idea of it as a symbol. Out of all the belief structures to hate, Astrology seems to me anyway to be the tamest ones as all it really hurts is your wallet.

[fugue]

10. I don't get how anyone believes it

Look at all the twins--born within minutes of each other--who have had wildly different fates. How can you argue that astrology has any validity in the face of that? Not to mention that astrology skips the precession of equinoxes and so is pretending the skies are as they looked more than 2000 years ago. Carl Sagan did an essay on astrology, and he put the dates for the signs if astrology was smart enough to update (as its founder was). According to modern astrology, I'm a Virgo. According to the original form of astrology, which updated for equinoxes, I'm a Leo.

And as for Feng Shui, the American variant is a watered-down, simplified version of the practice. Even if there's something to the original, I doubt there's anything to the American bastardization.

[leftofthedial]

11. wow!

November 21? Me too! Greetings from a fellow Scorpio. Right on the cusp with Sagitarius.

umm, never mind.

I don't find it annoying, just stupid.

[PassingFair]

18. Wow! Redux

I'm a "scorpio" too. Would be WEIRD if all atheists were scorpios? Coincidence?
Yup...read somewhere that Nov. is the MOST popular birth month, hence the extra blather about scorpios. Mysterious! Sexy! Yada yada yada...

:puke:

[phantom power]

19. sorry, I'm a Taurus.

[politicat]

22. another capricorn. Sorry.

Proves nothing, huh.

There's someone at one of the conventions who takes down birthdays looking for randomization as a means of disproving astrology. (I guess the logic is get a bunch of atheists and skeptics together and look for the birthday distribution?)

Pcat

[leftofthedial]

23. you mean you're mysterious and sexy too?

Wow! again!

[immoderate]

25. I'm a Sagittarius. What are you doing on my cusp?

--IMM

[phantom power]

13. Douglas Adams had some interesting things to say about astrology

and Tarot cards, and other systems of that sort. His view was that a sytem like astrology *can* be useful, not because it's true, but because it forms a backdrop that allows a person to perceive patterns that they might not otherwise perceive.

A sort of cognitive tool, that leverages our tendency to perceive patterns in random substrates. He noted that astrology, tarot cards, tea leaves, etc, all have in common that they involve *many* more or less arbitrary rules, which may contain internal contradictions. The rules themselves don't really matter. What matters is that they are complicated enough to encourage apophenia. To whatever extent that these systems "work", it's because they bring to the surface things that we already might know, but didn't put together in the right way.

In my opinion, belief in astrology, tarot cards, etc, does more harm than good, but Adams' theory about their usefulness seems valid to me.

[curse10]

14. It really doesn't bother me

not one iota

[SiouxJ]

16. I don't hate it, but it baffles me how

otherwise intelligent people buy into it. I have a very close friend who is very into astrology. She's educated and seems pretty rational, but every time she meets someone new, or even if I talk about a friend, the first thing she asks is when their birthday is. Then she'll immediately spit out some trait they are supposed to have based on their sign. The funny part is how completely wrong she is 90% of the time. She'll say, like - oh, Virgo, very social and outgoing, (just making this up, not sure if that's a supposed trait for Virgos) when in actuality, the person is very shy and reserved with few friends. I always tell her when she's wrong. I guess hoping maybe eventually it will sink in that this stuff is bullshit.

[Endangered Specie]

20. As a skeptic and a science person...

to put it modestly, I dont like it.


Organized religion I can handle, personal religion is fine, but this new age stuff... :grr:

[politicat]

21. I use cards from a game sort of as a thinking stimulator.

I have several games that have rather odd themes (a fairy tale game, a save your city from the black plague game, and a creativity booster game) that I use when I'm stuck on a problem and am thinking myself into a rut. The random nature of the cards sometimes jars my thinking. But I would not call it an oracle of any sort. I'm the one doing the thinking.

I think people who do tarot and astrology and runes and I Ching and crystals are doing something similar, but don't have enough confidence in themselves to attribute the insight and intuition to themselves and have to attribute it to something greater than themselves.

PCat

[immoderate]

26. Sometimes I flip a coin. It forces the issue.

Then I either go for or against what the coin tells me. I am absolutely certain that the coin is subject to the same supernatural influences that control the tarot and the I Ching sticks.

--IMM

[geomon666]

29. Your name wouldn't be Harvey would it?

:)

[progressoid]

24. I think it requires the same degree of suspension of reason

to accept astrology etc. My Mother-in-law is a rabid xian and last year she bought this huge book on astrology and signs. At first I thought it was odd that she should be interested in something that her religion is opposed to. But really its just an extension of her ability to accept things that have no basis in reality as fact.

Besides am I supposed to be impressed that Paula Abdul and Henry Kissinger are geminis? BFD

[fshrink]

27. I think that it's the systematic structure given

to it that makes it silly. However, I am positive that the time of the year you were born impact your character in some way. Now, that should logically change with your location on earth (i.e. north or south hemisphere). But there's something. It might also be due to the variations in gravity/neutrino/radiation fields. At any rate, this type of influences is way too complex for our current level of knowledge and, you're right, simplifying it in the structure known as astrology is suspicious and aggravating. It's like alchemy vs. atomic chemistry...