Astrology - Are you a believer?

[BlueGray]

At least that isn't contradicting itself every other word.

 

[Ming]

Burden of Proof

Astrology seems to be a very common subject that people forget this on.


Wow... Stuff like this will shake my confidence in anything, let alone something I never believed in the first place. People saying astrology needs to be looked deeper into, where? What part of astrology is going to actually make sense?

Yea that's why I tell people not to worship it.

 

[Epiphany]

I've never given much credibility to Astrology, although I haven't studied it so I'm no authority on the subject. I just searched my astrological sign on Google and found that much of the description coincides with my MBTI/Enneagram type, but obviously all INFPs or Type 4's are not Scorpios so I would assume that it's just a coincidence.

You are gifted in your strong reasoning powers with imagination and intuition, and these gifts, together with critical perception and analytical capacity, can enable the Scorpions to penetrate beyond the average.

Your sign has the potential for being a genius, more than any other sign, only because of your obsessive driven focus into whatever compels you.

At the other extreme is the procrastinator, the Scorpio who is capable of so much that you do nothing and become lazy and self-indulgent. Probably because you become so overwhelmed with what you see that has to be done that to get from here to there that it causes you to shut down.

Scorpio’s are the most intense, profound, and powerful characters in the zodiac. But in everyday social gatherings you are usually very pleasant and low key to be with, intelligent in conversation, reserved, and very friendly and courteous.

You usually give the appearance of being withdrawn or aloof from the usual drama in everyday life, yet those who know you will recognize your keen observational abilities in that you don’t miss a clue; it’s just that you don’t say anything. Your motto is life can be summed up in the clique that revenge is a dish best served cold, and with you it is so true. You just register everything and say nothing until you can use it to your best advantage. And therefore in business you can be very successful because of this incredible ability to always keeping a poker face until you lay down your winning cards.

Many Scorpio artists have used eroticism and sexuality as their signature but usually there is a sense of taboo, the dark, deep, and the exploring of the hidden mysteries of mankind. You will usually never see the art expression of a Scorpio being light, colorful and fun but mostly brooding, thought provoking, sometimes shocking and always intensely emotional.

Your main objective in loving is to merge beyond yourselves and to lose yourselves sexually in your partners, to a level of magic and therefore you are ultimately looking for a soul mate as well as a lover. You are capable of the greatest heights of passion, but you can also lose yourself in the pure pleasures of the flesh, and Scorpio’s can become machines of sensuality and eroticism when they lose that intimate or spiritual connection. Your feelings are so intense that even when your love is of the highest, and most idealistic kind, it can still shift into a melodrama of great highs and lows.

Your sensitivity, together with your extreme likes and dislikes make you easily hurt, quick to detect insult or injury to yourselves (even when you are just being paranoid) and easily aroused to rage. And your hurt and pains may express itself in words that could kill or action that cause lifelong enemies, for you find it difficult not to be overly critical of anything or anyone to whom you take a dislike but also fiercely loyal to anyone you love, just don’t betray the love of a Scorpio, remember how they love revenge best served cold.

I have seen an interesting theme in the lives of Scorpio’s whereupon there appears to be three elements going on within their psyche instead of the usual two. Most other signs have a public side and a private personal side except with Scorpio’s there is this third dimension, I call the shadow, that intimidates others. In childhood this mysterious side used to intimidate the Scorpio until they realized that this strange energy they don’t understand seems to have a power over other signs and that is when many Scorpio’s started using this mysterious power to manipulate others. The more evolved Scorpio’s have used this same energy for healing others with psychology, to medicine, or even with shamanic powers.

 

[Zarathustra]

I'm an astrologer, and I'm gonna tell you things about you without even knowing you....just take a look at my signature.

When I read your signature, I think: this is retarded, boiler plate bullshit.

When I read my full astrological profile: not so much.

Why the difference?

Because critical intelligence can distinguish bullshit from the reasonably possible.

As you've said before on this thread: you don't know much about astrology, as you've never seriously studied it.

And as I've said before on this thread: that renders your opinion meaningless.

 

[ragashree]

I'm an astrologer, and I'm gonna tell you things about you without even knowing you....just take a look at my signature.

Try to at least be original if you want to go down that road. I think the discussion has probably moved on beyond lazy applications of the Forer effect/Barnum effect/whatever, though that part may indeed have been consigned to the graveyard.

 

[miss fortune]

my entire contribution to the thread was sent to the graveyard

I have a virgo rising and venus in virgo... enough said... the stars apparently don't have a strong enough influence

 

[ragashree]

my entire contribution to the thread was sent to the graveyard

I have a virgo rising and venus in virgo... enough said... the stars apparently don't have a strong enough influence

As was my refutation of some weak arguments :rolli:

What about your mars though, and do you is your moon with uranus?

 

[Resonance]

What I am saying is that being adamant that there is no truth in astrology is not very smart. For a theory to have survived in different forms in different cultures it may have a profound truth buried in it.

I agree, but that truth may not be the one that it reports at face value. In reality, it will probably be something more like: the time of year you are born affects you indirectly in things like how big you are when you start school and what kind of birthday presents you get...or, living in a society where people use astrology will subconsciously influence you to develop more like your sign says.

From the physical perspective, think of the chaos theory but on a more minute scale - who would have thought that the impact of butterflies flying in one part of the world could have such a significant effect on weather in another part of the world.

The point of chaos theory is that it's totally, mathematically unpredictable. There is literally no way to know. Astrology tells us the opposite of this... which do you think is more carefully-thought-out, a theory made by Newton and built on by all the mathematicians and physicists in the world? or a theory made by a bunch of ancient people who thought the planets were humanoid Gods? and passed down orally between people of obviously different spiritual persuasions...some of whom might have been very creative but not very realistic...

I think we have to say that there is a possibility in there that we do not yet understand but cannot adamantly discount because we do not currently know or understand how it could.

We would not know what we currently understand about our physical world without the fact that people have been brave enough through the millenia to challenge established thought and seek the understanding to prove it.

Just curious, but what makes you think astrology isn't "established thought"?

 

[miss fortune]

As was my refutation of some weak arguments :rolli:

What about your mars though, and do you is your moon with uranus?

no... but Jupiter conjuncts Uranus... and I don't even want to THINK about what THAT would entail! :horor:

I'm mooning Aries

 

[ragashree]

I agree, but that truth may not be the one that it reports at face value. In reality, it will probably be something more like: the time of year you are born affects you indirectly in things like how big you are when you start school and what kind of birthday presents you get...or, living in a society where people use astrology will subconsciously influence you to develop more like your sign says.

Astrology tells us the opposite of this... which do you think is more carefully-thought-out, a theory made by Newton and built on by all the mathematicians and physicists in the world?

This bit of the discussion was probably among what went into the graveyard too *no comment required on the moderation*. Newtonian physics and astrology really have nothing to say about each other, and are therefore scarcely in competition. Any attempt to propose a mechanism for astrolgy founded on the Newtonian model is necessarily weak and open to ridicule. Is Newtonian physics our sole model even for gaining an empirical understanding of the physical universe these days, however?

or a theory made by a bunch of ancient people who thought the planets were humanoid Gods? and passed down orally between people of obviously different spiritual persuasions...some of whom might have been very creative but not very realistic...

Are you sure about this? Much of contemporary astrology is a relatively modern creation, though it's indeed partially founded on older principles. It's not necessarily the case that the ancients, including the astrologers/astronomers (when the two terms were hard to differentiate) DID think that the planets were humanoid gods. And an association fallacy appears to be creeping in here too. Would you dismiss the contemporary relevance of Euclid, Aristotle and Plato because it is fairly easy to demonstrate that there are no gods living on Mount Olympus?

 

[ragashree]

no... but Jupiter conjuncts Uranus... and I don't even want to THINK about what THAT would entail! :horor:

I'm mooning Aries

That's the principle of expansion in conjunction with Uranus isn't it?

I think I'd bettter stop now!

 

[miss fortune]

but yes... the concept that my outward appearance and behavior are ruled by the picky and fastidious virgin is just silly!

would that be implying that if I went home with a guy it was to do some laundry and the dishes?!

not to mention I'm supposed to have a violent homelife with my Mars in Cancer, and that couldn't be farther from the truth :rolli:

 

[Resonance]

This bit of the discussion was probably among what went into the graveyard too *no comment required on the moderation*. Newtonian physics and astrology really have nothing to say about each other, and are therefore scarcely in competition. Any attempt to propose a mechanism for astrolgy founded on the Newtonian model is necessarily weak and open to ridicule. Is Newtonian physics our sole model even for gaining an empirical understanding of the physical universe these days, however?

That's not at all what I'm talking about.

n-body problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Are you sure about this? Much of contemporary astrology is a relatively modern creation, though it's indeed partially founded on older principles. It's not necessarily the case that the ancients, including the astrologers/astronomers (when the two terms were hard to differentiate) DID think that the planets were humanoid gods. And an association fallacy appears to be creeping in here too. Would you dismiss the contemporary relevance of Euclid, Aristotle and Plato because it is fairly easy to demonstrate that there are no gods living on Mount Olympus?

In that case, isn't it even more clearly entirely made up with no basis in reality?

 

[ragashree]

That's not at all what I'm talking about.

n-body problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting, but why is it relevant?

In that case, isn't it even more clearly entirely made up with no basis in reality?

All theories are "entirely made up". To address this properly we need to define what constitutes a valid basis in reality and agree on that definition.

 

[Lex Talionis]

No, don't be ridiculous. There is no empirical basis for believing in astrology; it is pseudoscience.

You might as well ask me if I believe that Jesus appears on my toast, or if numbers held a special meaning.

 

[Betty Blue]

No, don't be ridiculous. There is no empirical basis for believing in astrology; it is pseudoscience.

You might as well ask me if I believe that Jesus appears on my toast, or if numbers held a special meaning.

Do numbers hold a special meaning?

 

[une_autre]

Astrology is ridiculous.

I can believe that the alignment of the stars dictates our destiny, as this is quite a tempting hypothesis.
However, astrology has no basis.

Astronomically, it is completely wrong. One cannot actually believe in the stars ruling our personality for example, because what astrology takes to be the chart at our birth is completely and utterly wrong.

A child born today would be, according to astrologers, in the sign of Gemini, that is, the sun is in Gemini; this is not true, as the sun is still physically in Taurus right now and it's going to be there for another two weeks.

It is not reasonable to believe that astrology can be an instrument to tell the future, because it is actually wrong. It refers to the positions of celestial objects, however, in the assumptions this so called science makes, however, it ignores some basic laws of astronomy.

According to the hypothesis, the stars are they key to what astrology does. But astrology (at least partially) is underpinned by an erroneous set of assumptions regarding the stars. Even if I were to believe that stars actually impact my fate, I still cannot believe that what astrology predicts is correct.

Furthermore, the astrology theory is fundamentally mistaken. What the astrological model predicts can't be demoted in any way possible, so it is not a good model at all.

What baffles me is how people can devote their lives to this and build their lives around something so futile or even believe it's true.
But of course. It is profitable.

 

[Windigo]

. . . and money makes the world go around! It's ANTI astrology! LOL

 

[ragashree]

It is not reasonable to believe that astrology can be an instrument to tell the future, because it is actually wrong.

(etc)

Do you have anything to add to this discussion beyond truth claims based on circular reasoning?

 

[Resonance]

Interesting, but why is it relevant?

Because the person to whom I was originally responding cited chaos theory as an example of 'how astrology could work'... when in fact it's the opposite.

All theories are "entirely made up". To address this properly we need to define what constitutes a valid basis in reality and agree on that definition.

umm, k