Astrologers claim that changes in the motion of the planets will cause changes in your personality, however NASA has discovered a great number of planets besides those that are currently known to us. Do you recall when NASA confirmed Kepler-186f? Its size is comparable to that of the Earth, which is found in the habitable region of stars other than our sun.
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Is it against the law to believe in horoscopes?
Astrology is the study of celestial body motions and alignments that are thought to have an impact on both the natural world and human affairs. According to historian Emilie Savage-Smith, astrology (also known as ilm al-nujm, “the study of the stars”) was “by far” the most widely used of the “many disciplines aiming to forecast future events or perceive hidden phenomena” in early Islamic history.
Despite Islamic prohibitions, some Muslims in the Middle Ages were interested in studying the apparent motion of the stars. This was due in part to their belief that celestial bodies were necessary, as well as the fact that desert nomads frequently traveled at night and relied on knowledge of the constellations to direct them. The need for Muslims to determine the time of the prayers, the direction the Kaaba should face, and the proper orientation of the mosque after the advent of Islam helped give astronomy a religious impetus and contributed to the idea that celestial bodies had an impact on both terrestrial affairs and human condition.
Islam’s position on astrology is governed by Islamic law, the Quran, the Hadith, the Ijma (scholarly consensus), and Qiyas (analogy). The concept’s classification is further broken down into halal (authorized) and haram (forbidden) categories (forbidden). Astrology is prohibited by the authorities, as stated in the Quran and Hadith, according to all Islamic sects and experts.
Do people genuinely hold astrology in high regard?
Christine Smallwood’s article, “Astrology in the age of uncertainty:
Since the 1970s, astrology has not experienced such widespread popular acceptance as it is experiencing today. The transition got going with the invention of the personal computer, picked up speed with the Internet, and is now moving at even faster rates thanks to social media. Nearly 30% of Americans, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, believe in astrology.
Astrology has taken hold in our collective vernacular much like psychoanalysis once did. At a party in the middle of the 20th century, you could have heard people discuss their id, ego, or superego; nowadays, it’s typical to hear people describe their own sun, moon, and rising signs. Not just because you hear it. People who don’t consider themselves kooks or climate change deniers and who see no conflict between utilizing astrology and believing in science are the ones who are saying it.
I quickly looked online and discovered this Pew research from October 2018:
The breakdown of religion was the one thing about this table that really surprised me.
I had a hazy impression of mainline Protestants as being sane people, but they share the broader public’s belief in astrology.
But hey, they seem like normal Americans (on the whole), therefore I suppose they hold typical American ideals.
It’s also remarkable that only 3% of atheists consider astrology to be true.
This makes sense, I suppose, but it always seemed conceivable to me for someone to reject traditional religion in favor of other supernatural beliefs. In fact, I could envision astrology as a kind of stand-in for a traditional religious system.
But perhaps not.
I’ve likened Brian Wansink to an astrologer who, using a combination of persuasiveness and qualitative knowledge of the world, can make shrewd insights about the world. I then attribute his success to tarot cards or tea leaves rather than to a more practical capacity to synthesize ideas and come up with interesting stories.
But does Brian Wansink genuinely hold this belief?
What about the group of persons, like Marc Hauser, Ed Wegman, Susan Fiske, and others, who like to refer to their detractors as “second-string, replication police, methodological terrorists, Stasi, etc.?
Astrology, which represents a rival belief system and is in some ways an alternative to rah-rah Ted-talk science, makes me suspect that they have this idea.
Although I wouldn’t be shocked if well-known ESP researchers believed in astrology, I also have the impression that mainstream junk-science proponents in academia and the media prefer not to discuss ESP since those study methodologies are too similar to their own.
They don’t want to support ESP researchers since doing so would bring into question their own work by association, but they also don’t want to cast them in a negative light because they are fellow Ivy League academics, so their best course of action is to remain silent.
The bigger issue, however, is not astrology believing per se, but rather the mentality that enables people to have beliefs that are so incompatible with our scientific understanding of the world.
(All right, I’m sorry to the 29% of you who don’t agree with me on this.
When I resume writing about statistical graphics, model checking, Bayesian computation, Jamaican beef patties, etc., you can rejoin the group.)
It’s not that astrology couldn’t be true a priori:
We can come up with plausible explanations for why astrology is real and spectacular, just like we can for embodied cognition, beauty and sex ratio, ovulation and voting, air rage, ages ending in 9, and all the other Psychological Science / PNAS classics.
Just that not much has surfaced after extensive research over many years.
The existing theories are also not very convincing; they are bank-shot models of the world, which could be acceptable if the objective was to understand a genuine and enduring reality, but which are less than compelling in the absence of empirical data.
In any case, the point is that if 30% of Americans are willing to accept this kind of evidence, it should come as no surprise that a nontrivial percentage of influential American psychology professors will have a similar attitude toward scientific theory and evidence. This attitude would cause them to have strong beliefs in weak theories that are not adequately supported by any available evidence.
Support for the broad idea that we should be kind to pseudoscientific hypotheses is provided, not simply for specific weak theories (although, oddly enough, maybe not for astrology itself).
P.S. Belief in astrology (or, for that matter, belief in heaven, the law of gravity, or the square-cube rule) is essentially costless. This is in contrast to psychology professors who advocate theories like the “critical positivity ratio which make astrology look positively reasonable in comparison.”
Why not accept or reject these claims?
Contrarily, acceptance or rejection of evolution, climate change, or latent bias may have societal or political repercussions.
While some ideas primarily affect personal decisions, others have more immediate policy ramifications.
I am less tolerant of well-known academic and media elites who adamantly promote junk science when they not only declare their confidence in speculative hypotheses backed by no solid evidence but also launch an offensive against those who call these emperors’ nudity out. Additionally, even a hypothetically tolerant and open-minded junk science supporterthe kind of person who might hold to the critical positivity ratio but actively encourage the publication of critiques of that workcould still cause some harm by contaminating scientific journals and the news media with subpar research and by promoting shoddy work that takes up less space for more thorough investigation.
You know how it’s said that science corrects itself, but only if individuals are willing to do so?
Gresham’s law is also true, but only to the extent that people are ready to use fake currency or to utilize money that they believe to be fake while staying quiet until they can sell their massive amounts of worthless stock.
P.P.S. Just to be clear: No, I do not believe that astrology is a waste of time, and it is possible that Marc Hauser was onto something even though he was faking data. For example, the critical positivity ratio, ovulation, voting, and all the other phenomena could all be true.
Simply because a theory lacks solid support does not equate to its falsity.
I’m not looking to disprove any of these assertions.
All of it should be published someplace, along with all of the criticism.
It’s not just that I and others find trash science to be problematicwe might all be mistaken!that bothers me about those who support it.
but that they persistently avoid, repress, and combat honest open criticism.
PS. Once more, #notallpsychologists
Of course, the issue of junk research is not at all limited to psychology.
This could also mess up the research of professors of political science, economics, sociology, and history who have strong beliefs in astrology, spoon-bending, or whatever (i.e., who believe that “scientific paranormalism” actually describes something true about the natural world rather than just a “anthropological recognition that paranormal beliefs can affect the world because people believe in them).
It’s probably not a major concern if a physicist or chemist holds these beliefs.
Again, I’d like to emphasize that I’m not attempting to stop study into astrology, embodied cognition, ESP, the beauty-to-sex ratio, endless soup bowls, spoon bending, the Bible Code, air anger, ovulation and voting, subliminal smiley faces, etc.
Activate a thousand blossoms!
This post’s main argument is that it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many professional scientists have this mindset given that a sizable portion of the populace is willing to believe in scientifically sounding notions that are not supported by any compelling scientific theory or data.
In psychology, an important field of study where theories might be hazy and where there is a long legacy of belief and action supported by questionable data, the repercussions happen to show themselves particularly strongly.
Psychologists aren’t necessarily awful people; they’re just working on challenging issues in an academic system that has a long history of failures.
Again, this is not a complaint; it is simply the way things are. Of course, a lot of excellent research is being done in the field of psychology. You must make the most of your past experiences.
What did Jesus have to say regarding astrology?
I believe that astrology was a tool God created for us to use as a spiritual tool and to better understand ourselves. I think there are numerous scriptural passages that lend credibility to astrology. I concentrate on what Jesus taught as a Christian. When Christ prophesied in Luke 21:25, “There shall be signs in the sun, moon, and stars,” he was referring to the significance of astrology. He talks to the disciples about the significance of astrology and how it might be interpreted as a sign of his coming back. Why would Jesus reveal this crucial information to us if we are not intended to interpret the energies of the planets and signs and if he actually opposed it? Jesus warned us that there will be signals in the sky upon his return, just as the three wise men understood that Jesus would be born under the star in the sky that guided them to him lying in the manger.
Zodiac signs: fact or fiction?
Astrology: Is it true? Although reading horoscopes is a well-liked past time, is there any scientific evidence that it has any significance?
When you are lured by a familiar interruption and your willpower wanes, problems may result.
Up to 70 million Americans consult their horoscopes every day. At least that is what the American Federation of Astrologers claims. A Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life research conducted twenty years ago found that 25% of Americans thought that the positions of the stars and planets had an impact on our daily life. According to the General Social Survey from 2012, 34% of Americans asked think astrology is “extremely” or “kind of” scientific. The percentage of those who think astrology is “not at all scientific” has decreased from two-thirds to roughly one-half.
The concept that astronomical phenomena, such as the stars above when you were born or the fact that Mercury is in retrograde, have the ability to affect the daily happenings in our lives and our personality traits is commonly referred to as astrology. The study of astronomy, which is the scientific study of celestial objects, space, and the mechanics of the cosmos, is obviously very different from this.
An element of astrology in particular that is gaining popularity is the ability to predict one’s future or provide advise on daily actions through horoscopes. Horoscope pages saw a 150 percent spike in hits in 2017 compared to 2016, according to publications like The Cut.
It’s obvious that many individuals are looking for methods of star interpretation. Understanding the locations of the stars, the basis of astrology, seems to be a sufficiently scientific endeavor. But can science support the idea that astrology has an impact on our personalities and our lives?
But since I have you for the remaining five minutes of this six-minute-or-so podcast, let’s examine the precise methods by which astrology has been put to the test.
Do Christians accept astrology to be true?
Early Christians supported astrology, but during the Middle Ages, it was less popular. In the West, support for it surged once more during the Renaissance.
The creator of zodiac signs?
The 12 zodiac signs, one of the earliest ideas in astrology, were developed by the Babylonians around 1894 BC. In Babylon, one of the most well-known ancient Mesopotamian towns, which is roughly where modern-day Iraq is located, resided the Babylonians.
What kind of faith is the zodiac?
The Chinese calendar, which is linked to Chinese astrology and prehistoric religion, serves as the foundation for the history of the zodiac. Taoism was one of the religions that had an impact on the zodiac. According to Taoist doctrine, a person’s “future” can be predicted using space and stars. This relates to the zodiac because according to Chinese astrology, a person’s future can be influenced by the locations of objects in space. The function of each zodiac sign in relation to the dates and hours was determined by the sun.
A yin-yang symbol, which symbolizes any two opposing principles in the cosmos and how everything functions, is frequently inserted in the core of various zodiacs. The Taoist faith is where the yin-yang symbol first appeared. One of Taoism’s well-known symbols is the idea that “a man is a microcosm for the cosmos.” The five elements of the Zodiac are joined with the yin-yang to read the 10 stems, which are used by the Zodiac to calculate days, months, and years. This is how the yin-yang and the Zodiac are related. The yin-yang, when combined, also influences the traits of the 12 zodiac animals.
Buddhism is another example of how the zodiac and religion are related. According to one of the traditions, Buddha invites all the animals that made up the zodiac. Because the majority of people in China follow this religion, which has had the most religious influence on China, it is significant to the culture of that country. The zodiac’s structure and development have been significantly influenced by religious thought.
Zodiac signsare they true?
Ancient astronomers assigned the zodiac constellations particular patterns that resemble the shapes of animals and people. As seen in the illustration, the zodiac constellations actually form a belt in the sky that spans roughly eight degrees above and below the ecliptic plane.