You’re seeing what you want to see and ignoring what you don’t want to see. It’s classic confirmation bias. You’re making totally tendentious, subjective predisposed judgements. That’s not how you test supernatural claims.
Obviously astrology is rot. Obviously the positions of planets at birth can’t affect people’s personalities or futures. I’m amazed that it would even be necessary to tell anyone that, but there it is.
The easiest way to debunk astrology is to point out that identical twins don’t have the same fates or personalities. game over.
All respect to 'lucy (who is out to lunch on this one and only issue), but astrology has never come close to passing any kind of empirical test. It’s basically just a form of cold reading. You can never even get an astrologer to tell you what anything means. If Mercury is up in Mars’ grill on sunday it might mean X but not necessarily because something totally else might happen or two different things can happen to identical twins. So all these planetary alignments are supposed to mean something, but when the rubber hits the road, they don’t mean anything.
You might as well read the wrinkles on somebody’s nutsack.
Ok, I’ll try to clarify. Them being related doesn’t really matter to me, I just gave twins as an example of people that are born in the same spot around the same time. Also, if you know one of them, there’s a good chance you’d know the other at least in passing.
So astrology claims that celestial bodies influence characteristics of a person. Twins should be influenced in the same way right? Why then, are there twins that differ on many things?
Just a note about this unfortunate meme, not meaning to scold. This sort of thing derives from the use of the expression “double”, which was in itself unfortunate, as it implies some sort of arithmetic “weight”.
“Double” really means that the subject was born at or fairly near sunrise, so that the sign that the sun occupies and the sign rising over the horizon are the same. A Cancer born at sundown likely has the opposite sign rising, Capricorn.
A rising sign has to do mostly with appearance and impression, and can even be somewhat misleading, or even largely irrelevent. A person with a lot of Taurus influence may have Gemini rising, but isn’t going to be thin, quick, and chatty.
But anyway, “double” is born at sunrise, “triple” would be new moon at sunrise, and I haven’t a clue as to what “quadruple” might be.
Should your horoscope be cast for the time of birth or the time of conception?
do identicle twins have the SAME horoscopes?
I’ve seen horoscopes cast for organizations-like the USA (DOB=July 4, 1776)? -how well do these horoscopes predict the future of nations?
now, i’ll shut up and listen!
Look, I steadfastly refuse to let my portion of this slide to an agument, which makes this forum an unfortunate choice. There is no proof, no proof is possible. Everything I say is anecdotal, and cannot be otherwise. I have not the slightest interest in convincing anyone of anything, my experience is my own, and your mileage simply has to vary. I will answer a polite question with a polite answer, but that’s it. (In my foolish youth, I was inclined to argue. I’ve gotten over it. Mostly. Working on it. But a futile argument is the worst form of intellectual folly, it cramps your chi and accomplishes nothing.)
When it comes to “empiricism”, it has its place. It is a tool, and an excellent tool for its purpose. But one doesn’t chase butterflies with a hammer: even if you succeed, its not worth it. I am reminded of Mark Twain’s remark about Rudyard Kipling: “He knows everything that can be known, and I know the rest.”
That said, I think Dio’s suggestion of scrying by scrotum is intriguing, and encourage him to pursue his inspiration.
Asked and answered, above, unless thats not what you mean.
Any two persons born the same place at the same day/time (or the same *local * time on the same day ) would have identical horoscopes, and the astrological influences would be the same. But that’s it! Obviously, a child born poor in Nigeria will not have the same life as a child born wealthy in the Hamptons.
For my two bits, nah. Gotta be a living, breathing person, abstractions have no identity to be impinged upon, no blank tablet to be written upon. Others with equal credentials (there not being any) will disagree. They are wrong! Wrong!
You can say that, but it doesn’t mean you’re correct. For instance, take WhyNot’s assertion that every Taurus she knows shares certain personality traits, every Virgo shares certain traits, and so on.
Now, it seems to me that such a claim can be quite easily investigated empirically. I could design a study to test this claim in a minute.
And then if the study shows that there is no correlation between birth sign and Meyers-Briggs personality score? What would that mean? Does it mean that astrology is no amenable to empirical investigation, but is nevertheless true? Or would the study show that, actually, someone’s astrological sign has no correlation to their personality type? Would it prove that WhyNot’s claim is false?
Yes it would. It would prove WhyNot’s claim was false.
And guess what, such studies really have been done. Now, can you predict what those studies have found? Do you predict that studies correlating personality to astrological signs found a high correlation, a weak correlation, or no correlation? Now, suppose such studies find no correlation. What do you think that means?
Sorry, I knew sooner or later I’d use a term wrong. That’s what dabblers do, I guess. I mean she has 4 planets in Virgo, including her sun. She’s a *very *Virgoey Virgo, in many aspects of her life. Look up Virgo in the dictionary and there’s a picture of my friend Gina. (no, not really. But if she had organized it, there would be, and it would be properly indexed and cross-referenced, too.)
She organizes partially used rolls of toilet paper by their size, that’s what I mean!
Sure he did. He predicted that at age 40 something bad might happen and that he might be able to get past it. And damned if he didn’t hit it right on the nose with 50% accuracy!
Truly eerie. Any more proof like that and my wall of skepticism will crumble to dust.
Elvis Presley had a twin brother who died at birth. Seems like a major difference in how their lives turned out, yet they were born at essentially the same time and place. How can that be?
Today is my son’s birthday - also that of Eartha Kitt, Betty White, Ben Franklin, Muhammed Ali, Jim Carrey, and Al Capone. How come they’re not all boxers, or actors, or bootleggers?
The position of the sun makes up the “sun sign”, hence your “sign”. It is but one factor of many. As I noted above, signs are continuous, they shade much the same way blue shades to green, shades to yellow. There is no discrete point where blue becomes green, the point where Aries becomes Taurus is a mathematical abstraction, there isn’t that much difference between the last degree of Aries and the first degree of Taurus.
And, thanks anyway, Dio, but yeah, we know the Sun is a star. Appreciate the effort, and all. Did you happen to notice which way the turnip truck went after I fell off?
