(July 20, 2020 at 6:28 am)Porcupine Wrote: Here's a quick poll just to see if anybody here genuinely believes in astrology. I get the impression that almost nobody here does, both atheist and theist alike, but it will be interesting if anybody here actually takes it seriously.
About 40 years ago, when I lost religion, I went through a process of testing pretty much every crankery there was to find. One of those was asstrollogy. I made it my business to learn all about it. I had a head start. I already owned a telescope (not a great one) and had a keen interest in all matters space related. I learned how to calculate birth charts. I had ephemerides at my fingertips. I learned how to do all of the calculations and produce madly complex skymaps for any given date and place of birth. I learned what ascendants and descendants were. I learned words like "triune" and "square". Then I learned what these alignments were supposed to represent and what they should be interpreted as for meaning.
I also learned that it is a load of horse shite.
Exactly the same thing has resulted from every single one I have investigated. Tarot? Horse shite. Dowsing? Horse shite. Ouija? Horse shite. Auras? Horse shite. Ghosts? Horse shite. I could keep going.
Now I had a few advantages. My old man was, in spare time, a stage magician. He brought me along to his shows as the prop boy when I was 10-11-12. I prepped the props. But I also learned how easily people are fooled. Ironic, because he was devout RCC but so be it. People compartmentalise their beliefs. The mad bugger is long deceased (he had a wild sense of humour) but I still practice magic. He liked to step up on a stage and entertain hundreds of children. I prefer to do something wildly unexpected at a dinner party. When someone sees it happen right before there eyes, they lose the plot. It's fun
Anyhoo, packing up the gear one night we were accosted. Shock horror. By a catholic. This old loon claimed that we were in league with satan and ranted at us from a virtual pulpit. Me the burgeoning atheist, and dad the devout catholic had a very long jaw drop and get the hell out of dodge moment without speaking a word. It was only the second time I had ever heard him swear. We were only marginally short of banjo music.
The real point here is that you are free to believe your own flavour of crankery all you like. You do not get to impose you flavour of crankery on other people. So stop trying to do that
