Speaking of stereotypes, if anyone takes astrology seriously, I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously.
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.
There is no qualitative difference between belief in astrology and any of the world's religions. Not saying you're not entitled in disregarding astrology believers but the cut-off point is completely arbitrary and dare I say irrational.
To me there is an a huge difference. I can accept religions, which are adding axioms that aren't falsifiable, and that are usually taught to a person when he is a child. And religions had their roles in shaping society for good.
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.
I feel it's more of a personal background issue. Do you really have objection with planets effects on personality but at the same time feel turning water into wine is plausible in the slightest?
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.
Magicians can do what looks like turning water into wine easily. Is that seriously your biggest issue with religion? If there's anything to be really skeptical about its that a person resurrected from the dead, rest of the miracles are pretty mundane in modern standards. And the way I understand their epistemology, they know it happened because people saw him both dying and living afterwards, so it boils down to whether you believe their accounts. I don't expect more evidence to that than witnesses, but then again, it's hard to believe when the only evidence is witnesses.
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.
>> they know it happened because people saw him both dying and living afterwards, so it boils down to whether you believe their accounts.
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.
" 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."
Wikipedia is incredibly biased when it comes to certain topics, especially anything pertaining to Jesus. The irony is, the section you have quoted doesn’t even have a source attached!
More reading:
https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
It's better than Britannica and other encyclopedias and has been for over a decade.
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.
One of the books that I've come across that gets into the development process of the gospels is:
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
According to that book, there was a fair bit of religious conflict between the gonastic branch and the proto-orthordox (and some others too) with gospels and edits that attempt to discredit the other sects or build up their own narrative that is in agreement with their faith.
I like to think that most adults understand the difference between a trick that appears to verse actually turning water into wine and wouldn't worship a magician as the son of God if they saw the trick directly.
Saying water/wine happened exactly once 2000 years ago is much harder to falsify than claiming a present, ongoing, and universal correlation between planetary bodies and psychology.
On the page you have linked, there is a section titled "Skeptical explanations," which contains explanations of the event that are both plausible and satisfying. If you stare at the sun for a while you're going to see some weird stuff. Don't try it at home.
> turning water into wine is plausible in the slightest?
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?
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.
Yet religions have a vision of the workings of planets (and the solar system in general) that is much further removed from reality than astrology.
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.
That is the bar of discussion though. If you literally believe the aspects of religion that are obviously, observably false, then that doesn’t bode well.
Did you include consciousness in the model of reality you're mistaking for reality itself? Because it can provide a causal link between pretty much anything, making your reductive "rational" analysis junk, if not dangerous.
Faith comes in many forms, in any undertaking human are involved in including science, watch out!
You speak as if religion and astrology are two different things.
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.
> 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.
The irony of you letting that affect your mind is amusing.
I would argue that astrology is in principle testable and it should be able to make concrete predictions. Obviously, popular astrology uses such woolly terms that all of the predictions can be interpreted as accurate to the believer.
However, the few times that anyone has tried to verify astrological predictions, it's turned out to be false.
If we get into this territory all major religions struggle as well. Petty gods from the canon somehow fail to deliver unambiguous punishment for clearly worded insults. The outrage over Bible or Quran burnings is largely driven by the demonstrated impotence of the deity rather than the sacrilege itself. The stories themselves are completely bonkers and self-contradicting in many aspects.
But I guess ignoring all religious people in the world is simply impractical.
I can't think of any religions that make any clear predictions, so they're not even wrong (as opposed to astrology which is clearly wrong). So-called punishments are typically enacted in some other realm (e.g. after-life, rebirth into a lower form etc) which leads to some experimental problems in verifying the claims.
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.
Flag burning is a great example in fact: the outrage simply never reaches the levels it is with holy text burnings. Not to stone-the-tourists, burn-the-embassy levels of outrage: possibly (speculating here) because flag burning does not assault one's identity in a way similar to demonstrating the futility of one's beliefs.
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. The temptation to gloss over them as ornamental bits is huge, but to believers they are doctrinal.
> And come on, we know holy texts are full of things which are clearly wrong, in exactly the same way astrology is. The temptation to gloss over them as ornamental bits is huge, but to believers they are doctrinal.
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.
Walking on water (or parting it at will) is rather unambiguous. The whole resurrection thing also would be mocked as taking Walking Dead seriously if not most people grew up seeing that believing this is acceptable.
An account of someone walking on water or parting it is clear enough, but is meaningless without supporting evidence. Of course, supporting evidence would need to be stronger than our everyday experience of people not being able to walk on water.
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.
Your view of the six days of creation is backwards. It is a story that is meant to justify the division into weeks and the concept of Shabbat, a day off once in a week.
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.
It's definitely debatable whether that's how the world was created (I don't think it was that way), but the merits of the message of story are also undeniable. And it is the kind of message you can only get people initially on board with using drastic beliefs.
>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.
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."
The bible is a clear about a lot of things that are utter nonsense, I wouldn't use it as a guide for anything related to things like measurements of anything.
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.
> 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.
Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” Romans 3:4
... and thus some Christians claim the six day chronology in Genesis is really a six thousand year chronology... which still doesn't square with science.
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.
> 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).
That's just a bizarre definition of light. By that definition the center of a star is dark because the photons keep getting reabsorbed immediately. Which is always true from a photons point of view anyway, so what's the difference? In fact you might as well say that the universe was dark until the first eye evolved.
In college a Christian friend readily gave "evidence" of predictions in the bible as reason why he believes that religion. I think a lot of religious people do think there are clear predictions. I wish I remembered his examples (which I found uninteresting at the time) — I think one was a prediction of an invasion of Tyre?
The problem with a lot of historical predictions is that they were too vague to be useful i.e. could someone armed with a bible have known enough about an invasion of Tyre to make a bet with someone before it happened? e.g. I bet they get invaded in the next two weeks.
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]
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.
This prophecy also has a self-fulfilling prophecy nature to it, because plenty of groups in America (alone) had good and (maybe mostly) terrible reasons to follow the prophecy "like a blueprint".
Astrology benefits greatly from the pigeonhole fallacy. With as few as twelve pigeonholes in most astrological predictions, of course there are going to be enough people overfitted to the model that any prediction "succeeds" for enough people that you can claim all the failures were within the bounds of statistical error.
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.
At least the world's great religions have a track record of acting as a code of conduct that helps to build and grow societies and nations. Astrology - not so much.
It seems many improvements to our world view and value system had to be pushed through against the pushback of religion. IMO the value of religion is to have a forcing function to enforce consensus around certain norms without renegotiating them every generation which is hard since it exceeds the capacity and willingness of much of society.
That is simply false. The first problem is the word "religion", which, in common usage, is as if we were talking about different flavors of ice cream, and the atheist or "unbeliever" is some version of someone who simply doesn't like ice cream. Man is a religious animal in the sense that, as a rational animal, he must worship something he takes to be the highest good. The question is never "do I worship something" but "what do I worship" and "is what I worship the proper object of worship to which I owe worship". How do you know? Well, as in all cases, if no rational defense can be made of the claims of a religion, then there is no rational basis for giving our assent to those claims. So the question is: can a rational defense be made? Too often, people lazily assume such a defense cannot be made of any religion in principle. They simply take it for granted that that is the case.
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].)
Astrology makes its predictions in a vague and personally flattering way as to overwhelm critical facilities. This is not very different in how religion uses the language of threats and social coercion to deliver doctrine over one's senses. In both cases it's a defeat of rationality (and sorry I dismiss your whole first paragraph as sophistry).
> (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.
You diluted "religion" into something basically like "belief". Religion is the belief in some supernatural power (and, I would add, that requires faith because there is no evidence). Believing in ideas, in "highest good" is not religion, although religions include them as part of their dogma.
I'll subvert this and say that any religion and atheism aren't rational. Ignoring the case of supernatural compulsion, a given person has ingrained beliefs/values, as well as a personality, that drive what they accept and don't accept. Strictly trying to achieve rationality embodies the scientific method, but science can't prove or disprove anything, ultimately. Beliefs that fill the void there are beyond rationality. A belief that is heavily debunked by science can be considered irrational. Just keep in mind that science isn't perfectly capable.
> but science can't prove or disprove anything, ultimately.
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?
Prove is a very strong word. Science is empirical, an endless journey of testing hypotheses, gathering data, forming theories, and examining gaps in understanding. We do have more or less incontrovertible evidence for the Earth revolving around the Sun, so it's not a problem to take that as fact. However, there are many things that we are much less certain of, such as the nature of dark matter. The closest to complete understanding would be having no evidence to dispute our theories. The separation of this state and the ability to prove things may seem inconsequential as I've described it, but concepts such as the existence of God and the basis of human rights aren't touchable by science.
So your argument is that science can’t prove anything because it can’t prove everything? Also you said science can’t prove or disprove, but it seems trivially easy to construct many things science could disprove. E.g. you could disprove that 5 N of force is not enough to accelerate a 1 kg sphere to exit velocity on Earth.
If we're to be exact, we can't prove that if I throw an object upwards with 5 N of force right now, the gravitational field won't suddenly shift (for some reason) and send it out of the atmosphere. If you reduce it to a mathematical construct (Newton's laws, the gravitational field stays within a margin of 0.00001, blah blah) then sure, you can prove that it's not possible. Of course, I would bet a million dollars that it won't happen when I try it, if I'm sure it's not a scam, but I can't be sure that everything will work out like some simulation. Science is based on observations. Some things we have observed and reasoned about enough that we feel really confident. Great! Some things we're less certain about. Some things are really hard to observe (social "sciences") in a controlled way. And some things are simply far beyond the purview of observation.
> If we're to be exact, we can't prove that if I throw an object upwards with 5 N of force right now, the gravitational field won't suddenly shift (for some reason) and send it out of the atmosphere.
Ok then let’s rephrase the statement to “Absent any sudden shifts in the gravitational field, 5 N of force is not enough to bring a 1 kg sphere to escape velocity.” Science can prove that.
And if we can’t prove something, 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.
Ah, but you're overreaching. I agreed with you in the comment you replied to. However, your point about rationality isn't so clear cut in the case of religion. If a religious person tells me that the theory of evolution is just flat out wrong then yeah, I'm going to dismiss that as irrational. If a religious person tells me that people reincarnate or get sent to the afterlife based on their deeds, I personally won't agree but not because science can determine this in any capacity. That's not a matter of rationality anymore; it's faith. There's no evidence either way.
> That's not a matter of rationality anymore; it's faith. There's no evidence either way.
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.
There is no rational distinction between positive and negative assertions in the general case. A positive assertion to a statement is equivalent to a negative assertion for the inverse of the statement. Numbers don't count (ha) because we know facts such as "the set of integers is infinitely large". Your ball color example is just nonsense. You used green but then switched to blue for the negative assertion. Also, that's not how colors work. In the case of religion, you're going off your preconceptions and biases. A religious person could easily say the opposite. You would both be speaking nonsense by saying your bias is more rational.
My somewhat mathematical point of view is that I can accept adjoining independent but weird axioms into your axiom set, but I can't accept running around with a formal system that has already reached a logical contradiction or that doesn't even use inference from axioms as its basis.
Yes, “X is true because it feels good to believe so” is not a rational basis for belief.
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.
Is it rational to believe in humanism? Is it rational to believe in social progress narratives? Is it rational to believe in science as a "force for good"?
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.
> 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.
> 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
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"?
> Generally atheists claim to be skeptical of all religion and mysticism regardless of whether it claims a "creator god".
Is it true, though, that that's what atheism means? As an atheist myself, I'm not sure it is. Certainly doesn't seem true - seems like someone who is atheist is simply more likely to also be areligious and aspiritual, possibly as a result of rationality. But if you want to be pedantic, you can try making a case to redefine the term.
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. Indeed, ask any layperson on the street what it means for someone to be atheist, and most answers will say that it means "they don't believe in god".
> My point is that almost all people hold unexamined beliefs
Maybe, but certainly not all as irrational as theism. Your post tried to conflate concepts like humanism (essentially, "be excellent to each other", hardly an "unexamined belief"), which don't require magic, to the belief of theism, which does - this conflation 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.
...says the person who doesn't realize atheism is a-theism, or that theism refers to a god, not just any belief or concept you want
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!
There's an entire explanation section on that link, I don't know why you're using it as proof that "it cannot be explained in any other way". Choosing to believe something happened is one thing, choosing to believe that is undeniably attributed to a larger power is an added layer that isn't rational at all.
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!
Rather than engage in a conversation that will wind up being ultimately a superficial argument or confirmation of your current stance I recommend a book. It's called "Theology and Sanity" by Theologian Frank Sheed of Australia.
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.
I'm sure on some level, the position of the earth, moon, sun, and planets has some effect on all life. These things are intertwined afterall. It would be interesting to gather data that could make assertions about someone based on when they were born. However it's clear other things have a far grater impact on someones development, like whether they have a father, financial situation, etc.
> There is no qualitative difference between belief in astrology and any of the world's religions.
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.
By going to your logical conclusion, perhaps we should not accept any of the world's religions then either, given that they are also arbitrary. Just because many are old and have many followers does not give them credence over astrology.
No qualitative difference but a huge substantial difference, you are born to believe in a religion, its 24/7 in television, in school, in politicians talk, its much harder to protect yourself from religions than it is to stay away from astrology, astrology is a thing you pick up, religion is served/forced upon you from the day you’re born, when you swear in court you swear to god not to sagitter
> 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).
I would not turn to Carrier if you wish to counter-argue Feser:
> 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.
> All arguments of this kind rely on some kind of shaky or dubious foundation.
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.
A changer that initiates a single change is themselves changing, from a state of not implementing change to a state of implementing change. This also assume a foundation of before and after, that there is a sense of time.
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.
Even if this does point to some higher being or reality, it isn't necessarily any conception of God. Also, true randomness in fluctuations in quantum fields could refute 2, no? Also, trying to extend the notion of time to some point at infinity in the past, as if this is a proof by induction, is absurd. Mathematics are free for us to make statements about because we can start with whichever axioms we like. However, our realities (plural) are necessarily constrained by what we think and observe. There is no way to be certain of the nature of one's reality without somehow transcending it.
While that's an impressive article, it seems to only prove, if it indeed proves anything, that science can't disprove the existence of God. It must be said that nothing can prove or disprove the existence of God, so the fact that the article doesn't seem to try either way is adequate. There are various things in the Bible that could theoretically be proved or disproved, but God is necessarily beyond our capabilities to truly know. Only in maths are there proofs. We're glorified frogs in wells.
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.
Is it my imagination, or does Fesser always leap into an accusation of the poor reading skills of people who disagree with him?
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.
> 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.
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.
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".
Prove, no - but the best argument for a "God" is the simulation argument. Space and time is quantized at the planck scale, which strongly suggests that our known universe is a simulation. Simulation implies a simulator, which would by necessity be an omniscient "God".
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.
> Prove, no - but the best argument for a "God" is the simulation argument.
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.
Isn't the actual simulation argument based on information density being bounded in a way that doesn't make sense. Something like we would think information density should be bounded by 3d. You have twice as much 3d space, you can hold twice as much information. But the physics argument (and I think it is still theoretical physics) is that it is actually bounded by the 2D surface area of that space, not the 3D volume. I forget the details of how this ties into simulation.
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.
> Space and time is quantized at the planck scale, which strongly suggests that our known universe is a simulation.
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.
Most secular researchers agree that Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha, etc., were real historical figures, so that’s a qualitative difference. Moreover, there are entire civilizations built on those belief systems—including the one you live in. Comparing those civilizations is an empirical basis for comparing the underlying belief systems.
Those civilizations were built in spite of not based off those beliefs. We wouldn't have created anything more than mud huts if we were to rely on adhering to belief systems.
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.
> Those civilizations were built in spite of not based off those beliefs.
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.
"Control and order" create civilization. Your ignorant view could be forgiven if we didn't have so many 20th century examples showing that principle in operation within a single generation: Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, and Taiwan. Going back further: Puritans, Mormons, Lutherans, etc. The Mormons escaped persecution and settled land nobody wanted and built thriving cities there.
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 individualism is a luxury enjoyed by the descendants of religious, orderly, and well-controlled people.
Indeed, ironically, free-thinking individualism is directly rooted in Protestant Christianity, which emphasizes the personal (rather than communal) relationship with God, and having lag people read and interpret the Bible. Do you think it’s a coincidence that the most individualistic societies on earth just happen to be Protestant?
I read a survey once (can't find it now) that measured people's belief in astrology vs religious convictions. Committed atheists were least likely to believe in astrology, but committed religious people (go to church every Sunday, etc) were close behind. Most likely to believe in astrology were agnostics and the weakly religious.
There is a lot of overlap, but there's also a big difference.
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.
EDIT: Another difference between Astrology and other theological beliefs is that it is not based on faith. Astrologists, once they've been convinced there's something to it, usually lack sufficient doubt. Having faith means admitting that one doesn't know for sure. In that sense, there is a certain rationality to a religion like Christianity, even if I don't think that god exists in reality. Most astrologists only speak in uncertainty because they don't want to be judged for believing something so unreasonable. It's not because they know what they don't know; they actually think that they know. Just try the next time you have a conversation with someone who says they believe in any form of Astrology; the more you talk to them, the more they will reveal their certainty. And yes, there are plenty of religious people who think they know the truth with certainty, but chances are they don't understand their own religion if that's how they think, and true belief doesn't really describe the majority of people. Most religious people have faith, if they aren't just going along with the song and dance.
> It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.
You’re reading more than he wrote. Science is an abstraction, a model of our world that we use to make prediction. It is true that the model is not the world, but it is also true that we have made unquestionable progress in our models and understanding of the reality we inhabit. We just can predict and explain a lot more than we could a century ago.
I don't believe in astrology either, but frankly, this sort of zealous hyper-rationality is a great way to die alone. Like someone who's not into astrology will overhear you and the word that will get around will be "Don't invite that guy to parties, he is not fun." You will reap far better dividends from just taking people as they are and trying to find the best in them. Which is the most rational thing to do is it not?
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.
The conditioned response that you're talking about is typical in a culture where we're taught to trust in science. I'm not saying that anyone should believe in astrology (I don't), but having spent the last few years looking into a number of topics similarly treated as esoterica, my understanding is that we're often unaware that science as a discipline is not dogmatic in what is possible. But human bias is probably its weakest element. How it has historically impeded our ability to understand certain phenomena (and continues to do so today), combined with our amazing ability to forget how wrong we can be, has convinced me that being open minded is not just politeness, but an imperative for anyone who wants to truly understand what's going on.
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.
The most fundamental element of science is not today's body of understanding, but the process with which we arrived at that knowledge. A process that generally recognizes human fallibility and how easy it is for us to trick ourselves. So yes, a lot of the stuff we think we know today might be wrong, but the point of science is continuous refinement and trying to eliminate the biases you mentioned.
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.
About a third of Newton's surviving manuscripts deal with physics. The rest deals with esoteric biblical exegesis and alchemy. Just another dumbo, I guess.
Not a dumbo, but such a massive waste of talent. Nobody would care to remember Newton's name if that wasn't for his work in physics. T. Acquinas is a another example - an extremely intelligent person who wasted his life on a word salad that can now be generated using chat GPT.
The birth of physics was very interesting. It was full of people discussing how the heavens and Earth follow the same rules while in one room, and then doing astrological predictions to pay the bills in another room.
> I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously.
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.
You can "tolerate" aliens? Alien life has a very high chance of existing - according to many scientists, more likely than it not existing. Alien intelligence less so, but still quite likely to exist.
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.
The current state with aliens is that we don't know. Some give 100% prior, some give 0% prior, and I can have an intelligent discussion about it. Regardless of our discussion, in the end, we still don't know and can't know (yet?). But I can tolerate people who have strong conviction either way.
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.
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.
Intelligence is multi faceted. You can be an excellent lawyer yet not stop to think about whether Astrology is falsifiable and what were the results of experiments that tested it. It can be fun in the sense that it appears useful and uplifting.
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.
In the US: Pizzagate? Jan 6 Capitol riot? I'm not sure the whole "go with your gut, bro" thing is working out. Tribalism, confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error, etc. are real obstacles to understanding each other and having a big world of content people.
Well, what do you make with people who go to church every week? That's a hell lot of people. And you certainly have your own set of beliefs that are also well beyond rationality. You would be better inspired to let them have their fun with what they want to believe.
You're certainly correct that everyone has beliefs beyond rationality. The notion of "live and let live" is less reasonable when it involves controversial topics such as how induced abortions or rapes are treated. A multitude of moralities can lead to people feeling like they just can't live their lives without ensuring the "other" won't quash them. Maybe they're right on a given case, or maybe they're wrong. There's conflict all the same.
Although broadly agreeing, it seems relevant that most people are irrational on most topics. I would expect belief in astrology to correlate negatively with beliefs that require systemic thinking but it is impolite to dismiss intelligent discussion with someone before testing them directly and making an effort to figure out what their strongest topics are.
> If a person's logic and epistemology lead to him believing in astrology,
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.
Not a believer in astrology, but it's not insane to think that there are cyclical processes in the universe that influence people and events which are correlated (without causation) to other cyclical processes in the universe. Flat earthers on the other hand are just insane.
Well, I also do similar kind of judgement. I.e. if someone is seriously religious, flat earth believing or ghost worshiping etc, then I would just assume they... have many things to left learn.
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)
> Well, I also do similar kind of judgement. I.e. if someone is seriously religious, flat earth believing or ghost worshiping etc, then I would just assume they... have many things to left learn.
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.
> 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?
That's an oxymoron because stupidity is never cute. If she appeared cute before saying that, she certainly wouldn't after.
I’d laugh and say ‘seriously’? And if she was really serious I’d say I don’t believe in any of that. My MIL is into this nonsense - she alone and broke and I think a great example of where crazy beliefs like this lead if you hold them long enough. It’s an enormous red flag for me.
I am personally ok with someone believing in astrology provided they are aware that it is hooey. It's fine to want some magic in the world, and to choose to believe in something that is obvious nonsense for the fun of it.
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.
Especially young people are still developing, learning, evolving and it is quite normal to be convinced of x and "practice it" until one realizes that the application of x never yields positive results or opens one up to manipulation. In fact, lies and liars can build convincing games and keep you hooked until the day you die.
When it comes to astrology, theory and practice are rather simple. Here's the hyper light version: Once upon a time, civilized communities were small, the gene pool was not yet diverse. "P" identified patterns and created narratives around these patterns. Children were parented and socialized using these narratives and so it seemed like these patterns were indeed natural occurrences. "V" didn't like the pattern her child was supposedly born under and raised it differently. Naturally, the child broke the patterns and the narrative. "Only" the children, who grew up close to "V" or her children kept diverging. Even today, people raise their children under certain narratives, with certain convictions, following patterns in thought, speech and actions. For some of those, more than enough actually, astrology actually hits bullseye more often than not. Some people crave the same kind of "higher order".
It's story telling, neuro-linguistic programming, socialization, marketing, rationality with bogus, unverifiable premises. The logic is sound until people decide to diverge from the norm, opening themselves up to all the variety in the reality outside the walled garden.
I mean, I get what you're saying, but it's not totally unreasonable to me that your relative age compared to peers in your school grade cohort could lead to correlated personality traits. I would expect a tremendous amount of noise, but I wouldn't be shocked to see a signal in that.
Astrology sign is an information preserving transformation on relative age to within a couple months of precision.
Astrology is important to the extent that it represents the history of Astronomy. If someone can correctly explain the difference between the Tropical and Sidereal Zodiac, that requires a certain level of knowledge and skill. I've been to planetarium shows where the presenter goes out of their way to debunk Astrology and it's usually the argument that the constellations don't line up with the Zodiac. But that lecturer must not understand the Ptolemaic Model and it's role in history, or knows it but fails to explain it because they are patronizing and condescending to their audience.
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.
That lecturer may not even need to know or care about the Ptolemaic Model. It is interesting history, but it isn't relevant to modern day science. It's a bit like being angry at a chemistry lecturer for not wanting to discuss any old Phlogiston Model or use the alchemical signs for Oxygen or Mercury when he has a perfectly nice, modern and up-to-date Periodic Table right next to him.
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.
I grew up watching the Project Universe show on PBS. It was hosted by Ed Krupp, no one is a more tireless Astronomy educator than he is, and he knew a lot about Archeoastronomy (to the point of writing books that are primary references). There is nothing weird in it.
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. :)
> 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.
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 automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational,
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.
The belief that you're a completely rational being is irrational in itself. If that's the belief you hold about yourself I guarantee you can find a friend or acquaintance who can point out contradictory and irrational behavior of yours.
I was born into a cult adjacent / high-demand religion and then left in my mid-thirties. There are a lot of people who are extremely intelligent but have a corner of their world-view (religious beliefs, etc) that completely contradict the other rational areas of their beliefs.
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.
> I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously
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)
Smart people believe a lot of stupid things. It’s not realistic to expect them to be perfect in all aspects of their lives, particularly if they have no background in epistemology or science in general. I mean, Jobs was obviously smart, and yet believed in all sorts of new age and alternative medicine bollocks. This should be enough of a proof that you can be smart and believe stupid things.
I just dug into it further and it's rather interesting. TLDR Churchill did not personally believe in astrology, but he did in fact use astrologers as part of his political and military planning on several occasions, but not for the reasons it at first seems. He knew his opponents often believed quite a bit in astrology, so he used astrologers as a way to better understand what and when his opponents might move, often with effective results. Fascinating. Thanks for the prompt to look into this more.
> I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously... I can't see an intelligent person ever falling for it.
Some of the smartest people we know, who gave us modern astronomy - Galileo, Kepler, et al - were into astrology.
>Speaking of stereotypes, if anyone takes astrology seriously
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.
> If a person's logic and epistemology lead to him believing in astrology
> 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.
>Speaking of stereotypes, if anyone takes astrology seriously, I automatically assume they are not intelligent, irrational, and I find it impossible to take them seriously.
Doesn't that speak more about you than about them?Highly intelligence (IQ wise) people have also been into astrology (and alchemy, magic, etc.). Not just in the time of Newton (an avid follower of the above), but in our times too.
>I can tolerate conspiracy theories, or aliens, or whacky religions, but astrology is just so dumb.
That's a quite 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'm not much for astrology (I barely know my sign), but I've read a couple of posts about it, and there's something to be said for not jumping to conclusions about a phenomenon with a complex history.
Here's, for example, a classic failure in criticizing astrology that I've read about somewhere: many "rationalists" make fun of astrology's claim that we're supposed to be influenced by the stars, since (the argument goes) their gravity pull is too low to matter, besides the moon would influence many orders of magnitudes more.
But astrology doesn't claim that the stars influence us through gravity. It speaks about influence on the astral plane (which is some kind of different dimension), not through some mechanistic principle. And, of course, astrology is so much older than the discovery of gravity, that "rationalists" making this argument must not know history, or maybe just had a temporary brain fart in making that argument.
I'd say astrology is not that far removed from religion (which you say accept or tolerate). I also found this interesting note on astrology on a "metaphysical" blog:
"Before we go on, it’s probably necessary to note a few points that may come as a surprise to some of my rationalist readers. Yes, I know about the precession of the equinoxes; astrologers discovered the precession of the equinoxes. (Where did you think all that talk about the Age of Aquarius comes from?) Yes, I know that the constellation Aries is no longer in the 30° wedge of the ecliptic that astrologers call the zodiacal sign Aries. (Signs are not constellations and constellations are not signs; every beginner’s textbook of astrology explains that.) Yes, I know that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not vice versa; astrologers use the geocentric positions of the planets because we live on the Earth, not the Sun. (It’s the planetary positions relative to where you are that matter in astrology.) Finally, yes, I know that nobody knows how astrology works; so? It’s a thumping logical fallacy to insist that an effect can’t happen just because the cause isn’t known".
I used to date a gal who was really into astrology and all manner of new agey stuff. I was crazy about her, but it would never have worked out. The number of dumb arguments just about astrology was high.
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.