Astrology remains more than unproved, it remains disproved

[P. Rajah]

Astrology Overview


Introduction

Astrology began life as a farmers' calendar in
Mesopotamia about six thousand years ago. It used
to be universally accepted and an integral part of
government but after the Renaissance, when
Astronomy emerged as the real study of the stars, it failed to
convince those with responsibility. It is now a quaint relic that
keeps the masses amused. It generates controversy, it
captures imaginations, it may be a triviality or it may be
dangerous but it is, after 120 years of formal research,
unquestionably wrong.

The simplest form of astrology is the Sun-sign astrology that
appears as newspaper columns and in statements like, "Leos
make good leaders". It's embarrassing to recognise that this
actually feels meaningful, you can easily see yourself in these
statements, but they are so vague that they fit anyone. Serious
astrologers all say that sun-sign astrology is rubbish, but many
of them are happy to write the columns.

Serious astrologers say that planetary astrology is where it is
at. It's the influences of the planets in your various houses that
is true. The argument of vagueness still applies but astrologers
don't find it convincing here despite the fact that every test has
shown astrology to be so vague as to be regarded as random.

There are several difficulties that astrologers have to deal with.
The signs are 30 degree segments of the sky on the path of the
sun. They have the same names as constellations because they
used to match up. Unfortunately, the earth wobbles slightly so
that when spring begins, the stars are twenty minutes late in
returning precisely to where they were last spring. So, ever
since the calendar became fixed, the signs have remained
attached to the months but the constellations have shifted back
about a month. Most Tauruses are born when the Sun is in the
constellation of Aries.

The constellations don't all last a month but vary from not
much more than a week for Scorpio to nearly two months for
Virgo. There is a thirteenth constellation on the zodiac called
Ophiuchus and the sun can sometimes make it into the
constellation of the Whale.

Astrologers deal with these problems by saying that the signs
don't correspond with the constellations because they are
different things, but how they can reconcile that with the
fundamental thesis of astrology, that the stars effect our lives,
is a mystery. They are asking us to accept that the stars affect
our lives, but not the real stars, the pretend stars that used to
be where the real stars were 4000 years ago.

This is ludicrously apparent during the switch from the Julian
Calendar to the Gregorian that we now enjoy. The Gregorian
Calendar fixed up leap years so the months would stop slipping
through the seasons. In 1582 the Catholic countries skipped
ten days in October to bring the seasons into line. Libra finished
ten days earlier in France than in Germany. From 1700 up to
the present, other countries have been adopting the Gregorian
and skipping eleven days to catch up. Leap years are a
constant reminder of the problem; how come Pisces is a day
longer every fourth year, except on centuries, unless it is a
fourth century? The astrological signs are clearly not fixed to
regions of the sky but to the current calendar, a messy and
imperfect contrivance of humans designed to regulate festivals,
planting times, and business appointments.

Finally, just to indicate the theoretical problems, astrologers are
completely at a loss to discuss the mechanism for the claimed
effect. Is is stronger for nearer objects? If so, why bother with
Pluto when there are hundreds of asteroids much closer; if not,
then you have to consider any object at any distance - billions
of them. Is it stronger for more massive objects? If so, then
the Sun and Jupiter swamp everything; if not, you're back to
the billions of things again.

Astrology is, in fact, the dominant form of the 'Gypsy Effect'.
This makes all forms of divination look as if they work. You
start with a set of symbols that have attached meanings and
construct a narrative for your client based on a random
selection of the symbols. You may want to enhance the
experience by using an intricate, ritual procedure to make the
selection. As long as the meanings are broad and vague you
are guaranteed that any narrative will fit any client and all that
remains is for the client to confirm the fit and pay you some
money. It is a con where the client does all the work of finding
meaning in vague narrative and the 'Gypsy' gets both the credit
and the money. So, what's good about it? Astrology contains a
fantastic collection of images. The astrologic imagery that
Dante wove into much of his writing is typical of the splendid
material that has enriched much of art, music, literature and
theatre. As a compendium of human dispositions and
characteristics it is as rich as any mythology and consequently
an excellent device for personal examination. It can tell you a
lot about yourself because it provokes you to think about
yourself, but don't confuse it with a description of reality.

And what's bad about it? It is a way of avoiding responsibility
for mistakes and for life in general. It gives random advice
which, for most of us, is quite satisfactory, but remember that
world leaders have been known to retain astrologers including
the Reagans! It gives a new twist to Star Wars doesn't it?
Companies have been known to refuse people jobs because of
their horoscope and this is surely the most stupid of bigotries.
It contributes greatly in discouraging people from thinking
critically thereby giving unscrupulous characters an easier run.
But the saddest cost is the millions of people whose money is
harvested by astrologers in exchange for vacuous advice and
who are denied the opportunity of taking responsibility for their
own affairs.

Astrology: it's a bit of fun, it's decorative but it's foolish to take
it seriously.

History

Astrology began life as an agricultural calendar in Sumeria
sometime around the fourth millennium BC. It depended on
what is known as the Heliacal rising of stars, a concept
fundamental to Astrology and largely forgotten.

They watched the sky and noted that, even though the stars
sweep across the sky during the night, they rise and set a little
earlier each night. If you watch the pre-dawn sky for a few
nights you will notice a few more stars manging to rise just
before the sun rises and obliterates them all. The first time a
star manages this is called its Heliacal rising.

The pattern of risings repeats in almost exactly a year so each
season was always preceded by a characteristic patch of stars.
By 3000 BC they had named four constellations that marked
the turning of the seasons: The Bull of Heaven for spring, the
Great Lion for summer, the Scorpion for autumn and the Ibex
for winter. After a bit of rearranging and more identifying they
had named thirty-six areas of the sky in three bands of twelve.
The middle one, the stars that rise where the Sun rises, is our
zodiac and the names have come down to us mostly
unchanged except that the 'Furrow' is now 'Virgo the Virgin' and
the 'Hired Farm Labourer' is now 'Aries the Ram'. They were
already playing with months so it was natural to have twelve
divisions of the sky and equally natural to use agricultural terms
to name them.

It was easy to make the mistake of seeing the star patterns as
not only coincident with the seasons but as causing the
seasons. So astrology became a prophetic instrument and
rapidly displaced reading the intestines of sacrificial animals and
dream interpretations because it was so much more accurate
with the weather. The Sumerians were aware of the wandering
planets and drew the simple conclusion that these capricious
entities were responsible for the changing events on earth.
From the oldest surviving astrological reports we read: "When
Mercury culminates in Tammuz, there will be corpses", "When
Jupiter goes with Venus, the prayers of the land will reach the
heart of the gods."

This is called 'Mundane Astrology" and deals only with crops,
countries, wars, kings and natural events. The next major
change was when the Greeks took over in the first millenium
BC and invented "Horoscopic Astrology" where a common
individual could be the subject of a reading. Astrology displaced
just about all of the Greek oracles, such as Delphi, which were
all but forgotten, despite a number of attempts at revival, until
modern archaeology found their temples again. Ptolemy
collected all astrological lore into a work called "the
Tetrabiblios" which has become the focal text for the West. You
must remember that this was before Copernicus and Kepler;
they still had only the vaguest notion of what stars and planets
were; and while they did know the Earth was round they still
thought it was at the centre; they had no idea how big or far
away the Sun and Moon were, or even which was closer.
Actually some Greeks did know many of these things, but when
the Greek period ended we got stuck with what Ptolemy said.

When the Romans became infatuated with Christianity they
went back to having a flat earth and they also made prophesy
of any kind a capital crime because it challenged the Christian
idea of free will. Astrology went underground in the Dark Ages
with most of the rest of secular knowledge. It resurfaced in the
eighth century and was fully restored during the Middle Ages
when the Arabs returned it to us, along with all the other Greek
pagan knowledge that had been suppressed including
mathematics, astronomy, music, philosophy and alchemy.

Western astrology from then on was thoroughly derivative. It
waxed and waned with vigorous supporters and vigorous
opponents in every age. In the seventeenth century it played
pretty much the same role in government as does Economics
today. It was taught in Universities, explained changes in the
world, and no wise politician made a decision without
consulting an Astrologer. Many early "scientists" subscribed to
it to some degree including Kepler and Copernicus. It wasn't
until reasonable cosmological theories emerged around
Newton's time that it was possible to see astrology for what it
is, but nothing really changed until the excitement caused by
the discovery of new planets.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 and fitted in nicely. Neptune in
1846 was less welcome because it didn't fit a numerical pattern
called Bode's law. In fact, the Rosicrucian Max Heindel was
claiming in 1928 that Neptune didn't belong to us because it
also offended against the magical number seven. Two years
later Pluto was discovered and made things much worse.
Perhaps in anticipation of further embarrassment a book
appeared in 1976 giving the full astrological details of a tenth
planet called Transpluto.

By the end of the nineteenth century astrology was being
subjected to rigorous testing and this has continued
sporadically for 120 years. Many of these tests have been
devised by astrologers themselves, many have even been
published in journals like "Nature", tens of thousands of people
have been subjects in these tests. There is not a single piece of
evidence to support the assertion that the positions of the stars
and planets match human personalities, professions, life events
or world events. If it is as accurate as its supporters say the
evidence should be striking.

Today, Astrology is rarely taken seriously by people in
authority, except for rather suspect cases like the Reagans. It
is believed by about 30% of people and rates a column in most
newspapers except the really serious ones. For most people it
is seen as a bit of harmless fun, for some it is the absolute
truth and no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise,
and some people see it as a corrosive and dangerous false
belief. Clearly, it is foolish to take it seriously, but we will have
to wait for the results from a British Parapsychologist who
intends to examine the question of whether it is dangerous.

Evidence & Testing

What evidence is there for astrology and how do you test it?
Here are three ways.

A major criticism of astrology is that its pronouncements are so
vague that they will fit anyone. This can be tested by giving
people a number of different horoscopes and asking them to
pick their own or giving the same horoscope to lots of people
and seeing how many it fits. You can do this yourself by
reading to your friends a number of the newspaper horoscopes
without telling them which sign applies and asking them which
readings fit them. Serious astrologers would agree that
newspaper columns are rubbish but the same test produces the
same result with serious horoscopes.

Secondly, the fundamental thesis of astrology is that "the
position of the planets (all planets, the Sun and Moon plus
other objects defined by astrologers) at the moment of birth
can be used to determine the subject's general personality
traits and tendencies in temperament and behaviour, and to
indicate the major issues the subject is likely to encounter".
This can be tested by tabulating the data for lots of people.

Thirdly, you can collect the predictions made by astrology,
where they are explicit, and see what proportion comes true.

Here are some of the formal tests that have been done.

In 1971 the Survey Research Centre of the University of
California, Berkeley sampled 1000 adults in the bay area getting
information on natal signs and lots of attributes claimed by
astrology to correspond. For instance, Leos are supposed to
have good leadership qualities. An analysis by Ralph Bastedo
found no correlation for leadership, political stand, intelligence,
belief in astrology, musical ability, artistic ability, confidence,
creativity, occupation, religion, ability to make friends, to
organise or to feel deeply. This showed that these tendencies
do not differ between signs, so natal signs cannot be used to
predict personality traits.

In 1979 Michel Gauquelin put an advertisement in Ici-Paris
offering a free horoscope. Recipients were asked to reply
saying how accurate they and their friends found the
horoscope. Of the first 150 replies, 94% percent said it was
accurate as did 90% of their friends and family. Unfortunately,
they all got the same horoscope, that of Dr. Petiot, a notorious
mass murderer.

In 1982 Australian Skeptics collected thirteen newspaper
horoscope columns for the last week of August, rated them for
good, bad and vague predictions about News, Health and Luck;
Relationships; Finance and Travel. They found very little
consistency, in fact most signs had a fairly even spread so, for
instance, you could find one paper telling you it would be a
lucky week and another saying the opposite. This shows that
newspaper horoscopes are essentially random.

In 1985, Harry Edwards checked all the predictions from Old
Moore's Almanack for 1984. These were written by a couple of
top astrologers. Of the 200 predictions it was possible to check,
less than 5% materialised and practically all of those could have
been based solely on probability, prior knowledge or astute
speculation. Astrologers are no better than pastry cooks, taxi
drivers or any of us at predicting.

In 1985, at the University of California, Berkeley, Shawn
Carlson designed a test in conjunction with a number of
America's top Astrologers to test the fundamental thesis of
natal astrology. Considerable effort was spent ensuring that all
parties were happy with the experiments beforehand. In the
first experiment, people in a test group were given three
horoscopes, one of which was theirs, and asked to rate them
for fit. A control group, matched for sun-sign, was given the
same horoscopes. The astrologers said the test group should
pick their own horoscope at least 50% of the time but both
groups did no better than chance. This showed that people
can't identify their own horoscope and find any horosope
satisfactory. In a second experiment participating astrologers
were asked to match horoscopes with corresponding
personality inventory tests. Again the astrologers did no better
than chance. This shows that horoscopes do not predict
personality.

On June 7, 1989, on American television, James Randi offered
$100,000 to any psychic or Astrologer who could prove the
truth of their claims. An astrologer who took up the challenge
was given the birth information of twelve people and had cast
their charts. He interviewed the twelve without knowing who
was whom and was to identify them by matching them with
horoscopes. He got none right.

In 1994, Melbourne's Sunday Age asked half a dozen
astrologers and psychics to predict the winner of the Melbourne
cup. None of them came close.

Finally, Michel Gauquelin created a long running affair, starting
in the late 60s, called the Mars effect with some research that
looked very promising for astrology.

He collected enormous amounts of data from catalogues of
famous people ending up with data for thousands of sporting
champions, scientists, actors and writers. He found statistically
significant correlations between the birth of sports champions
and the position of Mars, between actors and Jupiter, between
scientists and Saturn and between journalists and Moon. This
shouldn't have been too much encouragement because it was
only four planets, only four professions, and only for the top
couple of percent of those professions. He found no
correlations at all for any planet with random samples.

Because of the enormous amount of data it was difficult to
reproduce and one attempt at refuting it boiled into a scandal
where doubt was cast on the credibility of the refuters.
Eventually, a French group, with Gauquelin's cooperation, set
up another test of over a thousand sports champions and found
a negative result. Gauquelin then argued that some of the
champions weren't champions at all and that several other
champions had been missed and should have been included.
Needless to say these changes produced a positive result but
are clearly post-hoc data manipulation introducing bias.

Since none of these tests are positive for a random sample of
people it depended exclusively on how you define champion.
Gauquelin wasn't cheating or insincere but he was giving
himself permission to select his data by focusing on champions
and it was just too much work to find nothing.

Astrology remains more than unproved, it remains disproved.

Roland Seidel

--
Astrology: Fraud or Superstition?
http://www.seesharppress.com/astro.html

Ass-troll-ogers/jyotishitheads are the bane of humanity, and must be
cleansed or otherwise purified for the benefit of society.

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/vhp-terrorism

"I agree with you that the plans of Hindus' must fail."
Jay Stevens Maharaj, 11/14/2011, revealing his strategy of sullying
the image of Hindus

"Spit on Christianity so that it may be purified."
Jay Stevens Maharaj, 6/30/2006

"Let [Christians and Muslims] go after each other so that both
destructive philosophies and ways of life are
themselves destroyed."
Jay Stevens Maharaj, 10/09/2006

[P. Rajah]

Is Astrology a Pseudoscience?

Examining the Basis and Nature of Astrology
Exploring: Skepticism & Critical Thinking > Astrology


If astrology is not really a science, then is it possible to classify it
as a form of pseudoscience? Most skeptics will readily agree with that
classification, but only by examining astrology in light of some basic
characteristics of science can we decide if such a judgment is
warranted. First, let's consider eight basic qualities which
characterize scientific theories and which are mostly or entirely
lacking in pseudoscience:

• Consistent (internally and externally)
• Parsimonious (sparing in proposed entities or explanations)
• Useful (describes and explains observed phenomena)
• Empirically Testable & Falsifiable
• Based upon Controlled, Repeated Experiments
• Correctable & Dynamic (changes are made as new data is discovered)
• Progressive (achieves all that previous theories have and more)
• Tentative (admits that it might not be correct rather than asserting
certainty)

Just how well does astrology stack up when measured against these
standards?

More: http://tinyurl.com/7dch5n3

[P. Rajah]

On 12/6/2011 1:28 PM, Jay Stevens Maharaj aka the jumpin' jackass
jyotishithead aka the abominable ass-troll-oger wrote:

> The beauty of astrology

Yes, Jay, one sees the beauty of astrology in this series of
gigantically failed "predictions" from you:

"But, there are many Jyotishis and wise persons in both India and
Pakistan who are predicting a unification, or merger close to
the year 2000.

Is there any astrological truth to this? Very simply -- yes!
The simple explanation points to the combination of a retrograde
Jupiter and retrograde Saturn in Mesh (Aries) at the end of the
year 2000. There will be an uprising in most of Pakistan and
several parts of India at that time."
---Jay Stevens Maharaj, 3/13/93

"Based on one of mankind's most time-tested sciences, Jyotish,
(_no experimentation here_!) the India-Pakistan reunification
should occur on our about July 26, 2000 (the date of the final
signing of the pact.)"
From: Jai Maharaj (cy...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
Subject: India-Pakistan Unification
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Date: 1993-04-18 13:24:50 PST

"By December, 1996 most of the formalities for the merger would
have been agreed-to in principle."
----Jay Stevens Maharaj, 4/18/93

"The predicted reunification is to occur in a little over
seven years from now. If you have normally healthy kids,
they should live to see it. The same holds true for you
being able to witness it."
----Jay Stevens Maharaj 12/12/93

"The process[of reunification] has already begun and should
peak about the middle of the next decade."
---Jay Stevens Maharaj, 6/05/99


"PAKISTAN MAY SPLIT IN NEXT 25 YEARS"
---Jay Stevens Maharaj, tacitly conceding the worthlessness of his
"predictions", 3/06/2000


"This is more evidence of the reunification of countries
in the region -- as predicted by me and several other
Jyotishis. The reunification is complete at many vital
levels, and in varying degrees of completion at others."
----Jay Stevens Maharaj 6/20/2006

"In other words, the reunification of Bharat and Pakistan
(and Bangladesh) has taken place at most levels."
----Jay Stevens Maharaj 12/11/2008

"Just as the reunification of Bharat and Pakistan on most levels was
completed a few years ago, the reunification of Bharat and Shri Lanka
is also to take place in the future."
----Jay Stevens Maharaj 1/27/2010