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Do you believe in the signs of the Zodiac?

^ Cyc: it is not as iconoclastic as you seem to think it is. You might as well choose any of the several other constellations and include it with an assigned date.

Why are there 12 hours on a clock?

It is a matter of convenience. People don't seem to understand that the zodiac itself is really nothing more than a marked map, and that marking it otherwise will do nothing other than create the inconvenience of reconfiguring that map in one's memory, but the interpretations remain unchanged - it is the movement of objects (generally planets) that is followed.

p.s. I moved your post from the other thread for consistency as this is the de facto astrology-cynicism thread.

Lazyscience: while I actually agree with you, the way you present your views only betrays absolute ignorance on a matter. You can't criticize something you didn't even bother learn about.
 
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I'm unsure about a thread that exists simply to reaffirm. Are you sure there isn't room in the other thread for questioning?

By separating cynicism from circle-jerking, it allows adherents to thumb their noses at skeptics from their own little playground.

I'm willing to put some serious time and research into this topic, but not if the people I'm addressing it to, are going to stay in their thread, and I'm going to stay in mine. If that's the case, then what's the point?
 
The other thread has a very specific purpose. It wasn't meant to be a debate when it was started. It's like when people are trying to analyze a polynesian myth on a literary level with some idiot who knows absolutely nothing of polynesian myth keeps interrupting them to tell them that the polynesian gods don't exists because science says so.
 
its true though. astrology is nothing more than superstition. thats all you need to know. science is the system by which we understand how the universe and the world around us works through logic and reason and evidence. if astrology is not evidence based, why would you believe in it?
 
people should only adhere to reason and logic.
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I don't think that the above proposition can be arrived at through reason and logic; it is self-defeating in that sense.
 
Jamshyd said:
The other thread has a very specific purpose. It wasn't meant to be a debate when it was started. It's like when people are trying to analyze a polynesian myth on a literary level with some idiot who knows absolutely nothing of polynesian myth keeps interrupting them to tell them that the polynesian gods don't exists because science says so.
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Right, or discussing the Twilight novels with some idiot who hasn't even bothered to read Stephanie Meyer's work.
 
^ Sure. I don't know much about Twilight, but what I see doesn't appeal to me. But still you don't see me going to Twilight fangirl forums to tell them off. See the thing is, if the other astrology thread was set out from the beginning to be open for debate, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

My point is that the other thread was made with the specific intent of discussing astrology on its own terms. If you feel you want start an astrology debate thread, you are more than free to start a new thread for that, if this one is somehow not adequate.

But just butting in with debate on a discussion that wasn't meant to be a debate will not get you too far. I promise you that the people worth arguing with will come to your thread on their own.
 
Questions taken from: http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed...iety.org/education/astro/act3/astrology3.html

NSFW:
1. What is the likelihood that one-twelfth of the world's population is having the same kind of day?

Proponents of newspaper astrology columns (which appear in more than 1,200 dailies in the United States alone) claim you can learn something about your day by reading one of 12 paragraphs in the morning paper. Simple division shows that this means 400 million people around the world will all have the same kind of day, every single day. Given the need to fill so many bills at once, it is clear why astrological predictions are couched in the vaguest and most general language possible.

2. Why is the moment of birth, rather than conception, crucial for astrology?

Astrology seems scientific to some people because the horoscope is based on an exact datum: the subject's time of birth. When astrology was set up long ago, the moment of birth was considered the magic creation point of life. But today we understand birth as the culmination of nine months of steady development inside the womb. Indeed, scientists now believe that many aspects of a child's personality are set long before birth.

I suspect the reason astrologers still adhere to the moment of birth has little to do with astrological theory. Almost every client knows when he or she was born, but it is difficult (and perhaps embarrassing) to identify a person's moment of conception. To make their predictions seem as personal as possible, astrologers stick with the more easily determined date.

3. If the mother's womb can keep out astrological influences until birth, can we do the same with a cubicle of steak?

If such powerful forces emanate from the heavens, why are they inhibited before birth by a thin shield of muscle, flesh, and skin? And if they really do and a baby's potential horoscope is unsatisfactory, could we delay the action of the astrological influences by immediately surrounding the newborn with a thin cubicle of steak until the celestial signs are more auspicious?

4. If astrologers are as good as they claim, why aren't they richer?

Some astrologers answer that they cannot predict specific events, only broad trends. Others claim to have the power to foresee large events, but not small ones. But either way astrologers could amass billions by forecasting general stock-market behavior or commodity futures, and thus not have to charge their clients high fees. In October, 1987, how many astrologers actually foresaw Black Monday when the stock market took such a large tumble and warned their clients about it?

5. Are all horoscopes done before the discovery of the three outermost planets incorrect?

Some astrologers claim that the Sun sign (the location of the Sun in the zodiac at the moment of birth), which most newspaper horoscopes use exclusively, is an inadequate guide to the effects of the cosmos. These serious practitioners (generally those who have missed out on the lucrative business of syndicated columns) insist that the influence of all major bodies in the solar system must be taken into account - including the outmost planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, which were not discovered until 1781, 1846, and 1930, respectively.

If that's the case, what happens to the claim many astrologers make that their art has led to accurate predictions for many centuries? Weren't all horoscopes cast before 1930 wrong? And why didn't the inaccuracies in early horoscopes lead astrologers to deduce the presence of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto long before astronomers discovered them?

6. Shouldn't we condemn astrology as a form of bigotry?

In a civilized society we deplore all systems that judge individuals by sex, skin color, religion, national origin, or other accidents of birth. Yet astrologers boast that they can evaluate people based on another accident of birth - the positions of celestial objects. Isn't refusing to date a Leo or hire a Virgo as bad as refusing to date a Catholic or hire a black person?

7. Why do different schools of astrology disagree so strongly with each other?

Astrologers seem to disagree on the most fundamental issues of their craft: whether to account for the precession of the Earth's axis (see the box below), how many planets and other celestial objects should be included, and - most importantly - which personality traits go with which cosmic phenomena. Read ten different astrology columns, or have a reading done by ten different astrologers, and you will probably get ten different interpretations.

If astrology is a science, as its proponents claim, why are its practitioners not converging on a consensus theory after thousands of years of gathering data and refining its interpretation? Scientific ideas generally converge over time as they are tested against laboratory or other evidence. In contrast, systems based on superstition or personal belief tend to diverge as their practitioners carve out separate niches while jockeying for power, income, or prestige.

8. If the astrological influence is carried by a known force, why do the planets dominate?

If the effects of astrology can be attributed to gravity, tidal forces, or magnetism (each is invoked by a different astrological school), even a beginning physics student can make the calculations necessary to see what really affects a newborn baby. These are worked out for many different cases in Roger Culver and Philip Ianna's book Astrology: True or False (1988, Prometheus Books). For example, the obstetrician who delivers the child turns out to have about six times the gravitational pull of Mars and about two thousand billion times its tidal force. The doctor may have a lot less mass than the red planet, but he or she is a lot closer to the baby!

9. If astrological influence is carried by an unknown force, why is it independent of distance?

All the long-range forces we know in the universe get weaker as objects get farther apart. But, as you might expect in an Earth-centered system made thousands of years ago, astrological influences do not depend on distance at all. The importance of Mars in your horoscope is identical whether the planet is on the same side of the Sun as the Earth or seven times farther away on the other side. A force not dependent on distance would be a revolutionary discovery for science, changing many of our fundamental notions.

10. If astrological influences don't depend on distance, why is there no astrology of stars, galaxies, and quasars?

French astronomer Jean-Claude Pecker has pointed out that it seems very small-minded of astrologers to limit their craft to our solar system. Billions of stupendous bodies all over the universe should add their influence to that of our tiny little Sun, Moon, and planets. Has a client whose horoscope omits the effects of Rigel, the Crab pulsar, and the Andromeda Galaxy really had a complete reading?
 
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Studies taken from: http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed....strology3.html

Psychologist Bernard Silverman of Michigan State University looked at the birth dates of 2,978 couples who were getting married and 478 who were getting divorced in the state of Michigan. Most astrologers claim they can at least predict which astrological signs will be compatible or incompatible when it comes to personal relationships. Silverman compared such predictions to the actual records and found no correlations. For example "incompatibly signed" men and women got married as frequently as "compatibly signed" ones.

Physicist John McGervey at Case Western Reserve University looked at biographies and birth dates of some 6,000 politicians and 17,000 scientists to see if members of these professions would cluster among certain signs, as astrologers predict. He found the signs of both groups to be distributed completely at random.=09

To overcome the objections of astrologers who feel that the Sun sign alone is not enough for a reading, physicist Shawn Carlson of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory carried out an ingenious experiment. Groups of volunteers were asked to provide information necessary for casting a full horoscope and to fill out the California Personality Inventory, a standard psychologists' questionnaire that uses just the sorts of broad, general, descriptive terms astrologers use. A "respected" astrological organization constructed horoscopes for the volunteers, and 28 professional astrologers who had approved the procedure in advance were each sent one horoscope and three personality profiles, one of which belonged to the subject of the horoscope. Their task was to interpret the horoscope and select which of the three profiles it matched. Although the astrologers had predicted that they would score better than 50 percent correct, their actual score in 116 trials was only 34 percent correct - just what you would expect by guessing! Carlson published his results in the December 5, 1985, issue of Nature, much to the embarrassment of the astrological community.

A few years ago French statistician Michel Gauquelin sent the horoscope for one of the worst mass murderers in French history to 150 people and asked how well it fit them. Ninety-four percent of the subjects said they recognized themselves in the description.

Geoffrey Dean, an Australian researcher who has conducted extensive tests of astrology, reversed the astrological readings of 22 subjects, substituting phrases that were the opposite of what the horoscopes actually stated. Yet the subjects in this study said the readings applied to them just as often (95 percent of the time) as people to whom the correct phrases were given. Apparently, those who seek out astrologers just want guidance, any guidance.
 
All exerpts are taken from the same article. Someone was good enough to put together all the data into a single site. I'm interested in peer-reviewed studies that lend credence to the idea that astrology is a verifiable science, to counter the ones posted.
 
I was going to make a point-by-point response, but then I realized that pretty much all of this involves either newspaper columns or Miss Cleo's.

Look through the Astrology Club thread, and look through this one. That's 9 pages. Did you find even a single mention of columns or future predictions by us non knee-jerkers? I mean it is very easy to dismiss an entire craft with a history longer than that of science itself by judging the action of some capitalists who decided to turn it into a living, but it seems most people who dismiss it know absolutely nothing of it beyond the newspaper columns. There is actually a facebook app that generates column-style readings. You don't even need a human to do it. Do you think we are that stupid?

Two points I DO want to comment on are:

- The question of conception vs birth:
The whole idea, even outside of astrology, is far from being concluded - hence the abortion debate. For example, I personally believe that a human is alive ONLY after it takes its first breath. To me, a human in the womb is nothing more than a removable tumor (these really are my beliefs). It may be a tumour with personality - that's cute, but it isn't any more important than a tumor until it gets out and breathes.

Now if I were an astrologer, my rebuttal is that before the first breath, astrological readings of the foetus are one and the same as those of the mother.

- The idea of planets affecting us with energy/what have you:
I don't think either science or myself are great enough to explain what, if any, effect the planets have on a person. From my personal current world-view, I am inclined to explain the accuracies of astrology as emergent phenomena in which human and planet happen to be part of a much larger pattern, and so the planets, with some percision, work as a clock for synchronicity. You are free to disagree of course.

If you're looking for peer-reviewed articles to prove astrology, then I recommend you stop wasting your time already. I and most others here look to astrology primarily for fun and inspiration, as more of an art than a science.
 
Astrology is not a verifiable science.

Michel Gauquelin, mentioned in the article, dismissed the astrology that he explored but came to posit that certain planetary influences are detectable with the diurnal cycle (equivalent to the house system in tradition astrology).

I'm not offering what I consider to be proof. Astrology is a rich model that I like for conversations sake and certain sorts of contemplation.

Peer-reviewed is an interesting concept. Peer-review doesn't mean data has been verified.It doesn't usually even mean that someone has recrunched the numbers. It means a group of people, usually all within the same field have found the study to be methodologically sound. Part of it ends up being a test of scientific orthodoxy.

I don't think proof for astrology has ever been offered that is compelling. However if it did somehow occur I think it would take a very long time to get published in a peer-reviewed journal.
 
This became by default the skeptic's astrology thread, so bumping to make sure there is a place to express eviscerate all that offends logic and reason :)
 
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