Astrology and Horroscopes

I think it has value as a personal tool for the one doing it, but I'm not sure if it would have any practical applicability beyond that... its popular usage to me would seem to be an extension of charlatanism, a form of entertainment, or a non-traditional vehicle for communion and counsel with 'wise' folk who are not in the established religion power structures.

Speaking of words and their meanings:
How about lest we seed more confusion than is necessary use the words with the usages they currently have? How about we stop referencing what words used to refer to and instead focus on the actual things at hands, rather than the semantics around the things? Let's stop equivocating and get to the point.

Astronomy is a discipline of knowledge acquisition and generation by means of observation and prediction. Since much of it is concerned with naming and charting stellar objects, and the mechanics of their motions, while observed by astronomy, are left for analysis to the physicists who go about their own knowledge by experiment, perhaps astronomy is not quite as direct a science, but it still makes falsifiable claims and testifies to what it finds.
Astrology, on the other hand avoids making falsifiable claims. Vagueness in it's case is not a sign of wisdom, but of cowardice. It relies on people who don't require precision but are instead easily impressed to the point where they will actually believe there are magical forces involved in what is really no more than a stage performance, just as the magician will claim.
Astronomy operates on data. Everybody with healthy eyes can look through a telescope and see what the astronomer tells them is true, whether they accepted it on the astronomer's say so or not. Astrology operates on gullibility. It is only if you make-believe yourself that there is anything to it, that lo and behold, suddenly you find there is. We know this, because we can test one and hardly ever the other. When we can test the other, we do, and we find that it fails every single time.

That is why one of them is taken seriously while the other is laughed at and deservedly so. It is 2014 and just about time that we stop believing the planets have a personal investment in our job, social and love life for the upcoming week. If we wish to go with ancient traditions that have stood the test of time, why not reintroduce slavery while we're at it, too?

Also, let's remember that this thread is indeed about astrology and not about astronomy. And let's never intentionally confuse (a.k.a. equivocate for convenience's sake) the two again.

Astrology is an extremely complex science and art which, according to the previous post, it does not look like any of the posters in this thread have the faintest grasp of it's complexity. To critique Astrology on the sun sign horoscopes in newspapers is laughable. If Astrology is defined as the effect that the heavens have upon human life on Earth then the Almanac's lunar calender is Astrology unless you are old school and still see Astrology and Astronomy as one and the same.

If you believe that Astrology only makes vague statements you have not studied Astrology.

Astrological interpretation is an art form. Some of the people writing horoscopes are just people writing opinions, or worse, and it is fair to say that not everyone would consider them an artist in the same way that everyone making noise is not a musician.

It reminds me of another thread I read where someone was inquiring for a book on "Native Americans". The person that asked for more on what the original poster was looking for was giving a basic education on the Peoples that lived here just asking them what they were looking for. There are also numerous types of Astrology, and some of which you won't find on the internet. Never mind the fact that the internet is only about twenty five percent as useful as it once was.

As far as Astrology from a Christian perspective, common sense tells me not even to get into that, but....what were the three wise men doing? Then there is always the book of Enoch, the Essenes, and Archaeology.

ghost dog wrote: Astrology is an extremely complex science

No, it isn't. If that were so, people would have to study it to understand it and some could tell the difference between genuine astrology and the media coverage thereof. It would also produce testable and intersubjectively verifiable results, explain genuine phenomena with a necessary and sufficient mechanism and make useful and consistently and statistically significantly accurate predictions. If astrology were a science it would not care for people to believe it "because they are fools not to", and would not try to convince them by emissaries who instead of explaining any aspect of it just whine about close-mindedness or ignorance of the public. Instead, it would present positive evidence for even its negative claims, like that 'amateur' astrology isn't astrology, arm-chair sophistry is (demonstrably) not a philosophy, music theory (demonstrably) not an art and mathematics (demonstrably) not a science. Any genuine science that cares about informing people rather than converting them does present such evidence for the whole world to see.
Now, is astrolgy an art? I'll leave that up to the artists, they should know better.

Now, as for the three wise men...

This is what they were doing. And I submit that we should stop calling them wise... for obvious reasons.

the infinite heavens are not complex?

It would also produce testable and intersubjectively verifiable results, explain genuine phenomena with a necessary and sufficient mechanism and make useful and consistently and statistically significantly accurate predictions.

it does


If astrology were a science it would not care for people to believe it "because they are fools not to", and would not try to convince them by emissaries who instead of explaining any aspect of it just whine about close-mindedness o

It doesn't.

Any genuine science that cares about informing people rather than converting them does present such evidence for the whole world to see.

it does and has for a very long time in many different forms in many different cultures and in many different ages.

So then how come it is universally rejected amongst the entire scientific community with no exception short of astrologists themselves? A conspiracy? Suddenly people who's job it is to debunk each other came together to debunk one area specifically? Evidence, please.

http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/blackh/4Page33.pdf

So then how come it is universally rejected amongst the entire scientific community with no exception short of astrologists themselves?

this statement is incoherent and false. "universally rejected among the entire scientific community" LOL.

I rest my case

Astrology(on Earth) is the study of the heaven's effects on Life on Earth. The "scientific" community has enough stuff for someone, even as "intelligent" as yourself, to read about all day long about the verifiable effects that the moon has on life on Earth.

So is the case that you are resting is that you already know everything therefore it is useless for you to form anymore independent cognitive processes?

http://aeon.co/magazine/science/how-moon-phases-affect-life-on-earth/