Million-dollar question, indeed! If you think you can prove any validity to atrology, then why are you not counting the one MILLION dollars available to such a successful claimant from the James Randi Educational Foundation? I myself am on the hook for $1,000 toward that prize! Check this out: http://www.randi.org/research/challenge/index.html
–David
All of y’all who are making the (intelligent and reasonable) suggestions for blind testing of astrologers and astrology in general are forgetting something (or I missed something).
Jabberwocky (or whatever) is trying to prove correct only one astrologer, isn’t he? He’s not trying to prove astrology right, he’s trying to prove Cecil wrong, or something. He thinks he has one “real” stargazer, and one would be enough, to his thinking, to make Unca’ Cece question everything he knows about the nature of reality.
I guess. I’m having trouble following him, honestly. It’s probably just the language barrier.
Andros,
We haven’t heard from Jabberwalkie for some time so I think we burst his bubble.
Actually, I don’t think Jabberwalkei was interested in doing a real test. I think he was just trying to to get a response from Cecil. If Cecil said no then Jabberwalkie could say “Look, he’s too cowardly to back up his words!” or some such nonsense. If Cecil agreed to his “test”, he could say “Look, even Cecil takes it seriously enough to at least try it.”.
However, when Cecil didn’t even deign to comment and Jabberwalkie was confronted with the foolishness of astrology he beat a hasty retreat, as all fanatics do when they have to deal with reality.
I only managed to read about half these discussions (sorry), but has anyone mentioned…
(1) due to “procession”, the sun-sign zodiacs have shifted…which is ignored by astrologers
(2) there are not 12, but 13 constellations that the ecliptic crosses…what about all the people born under the zodiac of Ophiuchus?
(3) the 5 planets (well, 6 if you’re good) visible to the naked eye (not counting Earth) actually enter even more than those 13 constellations because their orbits are not exactly along the ecliptic (when an astrologer says that Jupiter is in Taurus…you had best check a current sky map)
(4) what about Uranus, Neptune, & Pluto which were discovered long after astrology was in full swing? How can astrologers suddenly (recently, if at all) incorporate these and still claim any kind of accuracy?
astrology = delusion + scam
Andros, YES! YES! YES! you hit the nail on the head!
maybe my english isnt as “global” as i would like it to be…
BigAl : I dont think not replying for 2-3 days to questions i have already addressed makes me full-of-shit, to put it i the words i think you decided not to use…
phobos: life = truth - (cold logic)
truth = science + (intuition || belief || faith)
fanatic = truth - all-aspects-save-“the-one-you-want-to-believe-in”
Also, long before modern physics came into existence, people were accurately predicting the motion of planets. does that mean modern physics is useless? of course not.
btw this was just an analogy, not meant to be taken literally!
BigAl: <<This is probably within 5 minutes of the actual time but totally worthless for the purpose of astrology. Not to mention any differences between that clock and the “real” time. If I were to give this to an astrologer he could produce a horoscope for someone born at this time but would it be me? >>
This is, of course, the explanation for why the astrologer is wrong when he/she predicted that a piano would drop from the sky on your head.
And I think you are dead on target about Cecil not deigning to reply. He couldn’t possibly care less. So if y’all wanna run your blind test, jabber, go right ahead. I mean, if the experiment is valid, you could use ANYBODY, not just Cecil.
I find logic to be quite warming. 
So, are you saying the following?
science = [fanatic + (all-aspects-save-“the-one-you-want-to-believe-in”)] - (intuition || belief || faith)
or
science = [life + cold logic] -(intuition || belief || faith)
I think the second one sounds better.
phobos note that i said “cold logic” - not “logic”, which is nothing but an approach based on your point of view. in other words, whats completely logical to one person, may be bull for another.
and i suppose you would find the “equations” i made up interesting. i really wasnt thinking when i wrote them. i just got carried away in the spirit of rebuttal, and lost what you can call common sense. guess thats why i flunked engineering college…
[everyone] i am not saying i-told-you-so, but i do wonder why C.A. isn’t “deigning to reply”. what has he got to lose?
if he doesnt want to take it up, all he needs to do is say so. i promise i wont post any “smartass” comments addressed to him in case this should happen.
Jabberwalkie,
Welcome back. I don’t think you’re full of shit because you didn’t answer for a couple of days. You have provided me with plenty of other reasons.
I am still waiting for you to address some of the issues that I and other members have raised. I understand that you probably don’t have the answers, but then you really aren’t qualified for this are you?
I think you can give up on the idea of having Cecil respond to your challange. The best you could hope for is to have someone else accept your challenge and be so amazed that he/she weigh in on your side in convincing Cecil. I wouldn’t hold my breath though, unless you believe it also somehow effects reality.
Dex (just watched Philadelphia Story again last night, BTW, and Kate is still just dreamy) said:
Sure, but jabber has this idea that he can somehow convince Cecil to abandon all sense of reality and embrace the glories of astrology. Or something. He doesn’t want to prove it with just anyone, he wants to prove it to Cecil. And he doesn’t realize that Cecil simply doesn’t give a rat’s hindquarters.
jabber sed:
His time. He’s far too busy to waste it on something like this. Jabber, if you really want to prove something, go out and get that million dollars that Randi is offering. Then I guarantee that Cecil will listen to you.
Al, right in one. He will not address the issues because he either doesn’t understand them or simply cannot.
…check out this week’s horoscopes at The Onion. Tell me this doesn’t show how accurate astrology is.
How about this, jabberwalkie: I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about me and my personality, and you deduce my birthday.
Or, if you’d rather, deduce the birthday of my identical twin.
Jaberwalkie, if you’d like me to, I’ll supply my own birthdate, sex, etc. However, for me to be convinced that astrology has any validity to it, your astrologer friend would have to reveal information about me that could not have been easily obtained through conventional means.
For example, it would not be enough to say, “He has discovered that you are an atheist,” because that information is easy to find on the Internet.
Also, this information must be unambiguous. For example, it would not be enough to say that there is something special about my physical features; your astrologer friend would have to tell me exactly what is special.
This unambigious information, which is difficult (if not impossible) to find by conventional means, must also be specific to me. For instance, saying “You have, at least once, thought about killing yourself,” would not be specific to me because many people have, at one time or another, considered killing themselves.
There is one more restriction: more than one piece of information must be discovered. It is possible that, just by sheer guesswork, one could come up with some unambigious information specific to me that is hard to find from conventional sources. Therefore, to be convinced that astrology has any validity to it, several pieces of information meeting the above restrictions must be presented.
So here’s my challenge to you:
Given my relevant data, discover at least 5 pieces of information about me that are specific to me, unambiguous, and cannot be found easily by conventional means.
Are you up to the challenge or is astrology bunk?
Just a few point I’d like to throw out into the arena:
(1) Q.E.D. = Quod erat demonstratum (not demonstrandum), literally means, “which has been demonstrated”.
(2) in discussing (Western) astrology, I think one should make the distinction between natal astrology (that based solely on the individual’s birth chart, and which purports to be map of the inherent psyche/personality of the individual) and the astrology of progressed charts, which is used to make predictions about the individual throughout life. The latter is much more complicated because it involved not only the birth chart, but the “progressed” chart (a sort of derivative birth chart which is applicable only to one year of a person’s life, and therefore must be re-calculated for each year of interest), as well as the transits – that is, where the planets actually are (as opposed to where they were i.e. the birth chart) for a particular period of interest. Interpretations and predictions involve assessing the “interactions” between these three sets of informaiton. Whether or not one accepts that astrology has any validity, one can easily see that predictive astrology is more complex than natal astrology, and so offers greater opportunity for “operator error”. Not so much different than far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics: the farther away one gets from the equilibrium state/starting point, the harder it is to predict which way the system will go.
Personally, I only do natal astrology. For one, I don’t have time to do the predictive stuff; and two, I’m not sure I’d trust the results I (or anyone else) might get. However, in my own experience, natal astrology can be quite useful – not as a predictive tool, but towards understanding one’s own inherent “wiring”.
Which is not to say that astrology is the only way to get at this kind of information. But it’s the tool with which I am familiar.
(3) Jabberwalkie (I think he was the one who said this?) is wrong to say a few seconds error in a horoscope can change everything. Astrological calculations are not based on split-second timing. A matter of few minutes can make a difference, yes; but without getting into too technical of an explanation here (which I’d be happy to do later, if anyone wants to read it), it really depends. In some charts, a shift of a few minutes one way or another can change certain features significantly; in others it makes no great difference. And when you know that the given birth is accurate to within, say, ten minutes, you can usually make some allowances for that fact, and not place to strong an interpretation on the affected feature. I realize that this may sound like hand-waving, but it isn’t; I just hesitate to launch into the techno-babble unless someone is really listening.
(4) I think it was in rather poor taste for the OP to challenge Mr Adams to an astrological showdown. If Mr Adams and the other posters to this thread do not think astrology is useful, that is their prerogative and nothing is to be gained by attempting to brow-beat one another into submission.
I personally have no use for particle physics in my everyday life. That doesn’t mean I think it’s an entirely worthless pursuit. But is also doesn’t mean that I want someone to “prove” its value in my life. I don’t like it when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door and won’t take “no” for an answer, either.
Yours truly from knife-edge of reasonable scepticism and empiricism.
I’ll freely admit that I know nothing about this “progressive astrology” business, but if it’s just a matter of saying where the planets will be at any given time in a person’s life, it shouldn’t be any harder than natal astrology. We know exactly the rules governing the motions of the planets, and can calculate their positions to within fractions of an arcsecond, decades in advance. It’s no harder to say where the planets will be on my fiftieth birthday than it is to say where they were on my zeroth.
Chronos:
Agreed. I have ephemerides at home telling me the planetary positions from 1900 through the end of 2050. (Unless I live to be about 85, I won’t be needing any more.) Getting this information isn’t what makes predictive astrology more challenging.
What does it that you have three charts, not just one, to interpret. And you have to interpret them in relation to one another. It’s not something which interests me sufficiently to spend the time doing.
Hope this clarifies the confusion.
Fair enough, MJH. I still don’t believe either version is valid, mind, but I can see how interrelating three separate charts would be more difficult than just one at a time.
Interesting. What kinds of things do the natal astrology charts reveal then? And is there information required other than the time and place of birth? If not, do two children born in the same hospital at the same time have the same chart?
If the charts do in fact contain valid info, wouldn’t we be able to line them up with actual descriptions of people? If so, then the same kind of blind test I outlined for jabber would still be valid. And if the charts can’t be said to correspond to actual people, then they would seem to be worthless.
Ugly
MJH wrote:
So when you need to calculate your time of birth to within a few minutes, what clock do you use? Is it Coordinated Universal Time, or observed local time, or true local time? Do you account for the partial-days due to the poor design of how the Earth doesn’t revolve around the sun in an integral number of days?
By the way, my second son was born last week, at approximately 5:26:30pm Central Daylight Time on Wednesday, August 23. As with my other son who’s nearly four, I have no idea what his astrological sign is. And please don’t tell me - this is an ignorance I’m proud of.
Can someone please tell me how to properly quote your posts, so that I can answer them in the usual format? Thanks.
CurtC: Congratulations on the birth of your second son!
Greenwich Mean Time is used to calculate the planetary positions at the time of birth. This is because the ephemeris lists observed positions for 0-deg longitude – either at noon or at midnight, depending on which type you buy. So the point is that you have to determine what GMT was at birth and (essentially) interpolate planetary positions between the previous midnight (or noon) and the next.
True Local Time is used to calculate the position of the Ascendant (degree/sign on the horizon) and Midheaven (degree/sign directly overhead), as observed from the place of birth. Sidereal time is used for this, but corrections are made to account for the 4-min difference between the sidereal and solar day. This is also where latitude of birthplace comes into play. Then you consult a reference table – which usually lists the calculated Ascendant/ Midheaven positions every four minutes for each whole degree of latitude – and interpolate.
I’m not sure why you ask about partial-days – I mean, i understand you are referring to the fact that the solar year is 365.25 (or thereabouts) days long. But this has no effect on clock time – or dates, for that matter. The Gregorian calender itself corrects for this; it’s designed so that a particular astronomical phenomenon (the vernal equinox) occurs on the same calendar day, over the long haul. So every fourth year, the equinox occurs on the same calendar day and at about the same time.
Chronos: Good to know that I explained myself clearly.
RJKUgly: OP was correct about required info for a birth chart. Date of birth, time of birth (as nearly as possible) and place of birth (since both longitude and latitude enter the calculations).
Theoretically, yes: two children born at the same time in the same place have the same charts. Does this mean, theoretically, that they have identical personalities? Yes, at least at birth; but this does not mean they will remain exactly the same throughout their lives. A personality does not develop in isolation: environment and genetics plays a role. The inherent personality interacts with its environment, and is molded by it; and vice versa. Astrology does not say that the traits of the psyche are carved in stone and unchanging. But it does teach that every person is different, born with different inherent strengths, weaknesses, talents and traits. These may grow, change and alter through life – but the inherent, underlying persona is still there. Just as you grow physically, build bones and muscles, grow older, turn grey, lose your hair, etc. – your genes remain the same. You are still you, even if you are not exactly the same as you were at birth. There are still things about you which define you, distinct from everyone else. Two adults with the same chart would find that they share similar personality traits, strengths, flaws, etc. How these played out in their lives and experiences is an entirely different matter.
I know some people think that children are born as blank slates, upon which experience writes and gives them who they are. But what parent will argue that their children did not exhibit some degree of individuality, even in infancy?
As for matching charts to people: I think it should be possible, yes, but from a scientific perspective I see a few snares. For one, the natal chart is not an exact map of the adult with his/her cumulative experiences (see above). Also, matching a chart to the individual presumes that the individual is fully self-aware and in touch with him/herself enough to recognize his/her own description. This is not always going to be so; as someone observed much earlier in this thread, people often hear what they want to hear about themselves, not nec. what is true.
Sorry – have to dash to lunch but I will happily continue later on. And answer you more specifically about what kind of information the chart reveals.