Scientific Skeptics against Astrologic Sense.

Hello,
I was wondering why skeptics in general are so arrogant towards Astrology and will not research the subject? Why are some skeptics so afraid if they are?
Thank you

Probably because its a dificult subject, but probably more so, because, how do you prove it in a real physical sence, and even if you do, which in some instances in my opinion isnt too hard, what do you do with it. Research costs money and time, time costs money too. If you disprove something enough you dont want to do, you dont have to do it. How whould a scientist actually recieve funds to study something that doesn't as far as I know have a very deffinite financial payoff, and I dont believe that the goverment would be able to get the public aproval for the funds to do it.
Then again, as far as groups go, the catholic Church has a big obsevatory somewhere, I think its arizona but I dont know for sure, anyhow its suposed to be state of the art, My guess is there watching the stars, ya know looking for stuff, Astrological stuff. But Im not really sure what the use it for.

Who knows for sure, some people may fun of stuff they dont understand, or ya know, make nothing of it.
Some people look.
mabie scientists have a hard time studying it because they are afraid it will disprove too many of there pet theories, but science is busting forward in the areas of physics and metaphysics and this is a time of great change in those areas, Im interested to see if Astrology, which has showed up in every single time of major social change I know of, in the world, will show up anytime soon on a forefront and possibly be more widespread, But I doubt it.

Hi,
You bring up so many intresting points! All my life I wondered about astrology, but I wonder "why" it is what it is and I always thought it was more about NATAL Astrology.
Now if I was limited to just that information, I would think Astrology is just Astrology and there is nothing wrong with it. But to go beyond NATAL Astrology as a department onto itself and go to the many other departments like Horary or Vedic and others is another. I found out just last week there is Nadi Astrology.
You are right...research costs money, to anyone, skeptic or even an astrologer as well. I am finding out that the vast majority of skeptics come out of the School of James Randi and these folks need the money for any pet project not to debunk astrology but other fields of thought.
I am very much into Astrology, I thought this subject is strange from one perspective....1 dementional perspective. I was so wrong! So I picked up a basic book on the subject and study, then I ran my own tests on my life and some of the things that happened to my life started to perk out.
I became very intrested and started to Google astrology, and to my amazement found many websites books and even this place!!!
You guys here are full of great information and intellegent astrologically!

But you go on YouTube and you watch videos from Astrologers aplying their knowledge and you have the critics(and it's "ok" to have an opinion) and skeptics, but never backed up with just the basic understanding of the subject at hand. They, the skeptics will unjustly make their statements and just use their comments to get a kick from their ego's to help them, getting a kick out of seeing the astrologer(s) post a rebuttal.
To me I get tired of this and if I disagree, I would respectfully do that, but I do not because I am into Astrology.

Thank you for your time!

The scientific testing of astrology is a complete and utter joke.

Astrology is an art, like music, dance, painting and poetry. There is no such thing as art being 'accurate', an art form is measured in terms of it's 'significance'. As an art, it cannot be subjected to testing by scientific criteria.

What scientific criteria might we apply to a Picasso in order to determine whether it bears any significance as art or not?

Okay, I am breaching copyright here, but I don't care, because this quote from John Frawley is pure dynamite, and I applaud what he says about the nonsensical idea that astrology, an art, can somehow be validated by science.

In this quote, Frawley calls astrology a 'true science' as opposed to modern science, but I disagree, interpretative astrology is an art, and astrolgers are artists, not scientists, but art is 'true science' anyway.

The quote is from the appendix of 'The Real Astrology', and while I feel a bit guilty breaching his copywrite, I am also doing him a favour in advertising his brilliant book, and I consider this to be a very important and wise statement, and although I could paraphrase, I couldn't possibly put it better than he.

Comments that are in brackets (parentheses), or underlined, are my own additions:

''Competent astrologers are few and far between; but somehow the scientists who run the supposed tests on astrology seem to have no trouble in finding them, 'We tested 50/500/5000 astrologers', they proclaim, 'and found that only two of them knew what day of the week it was.'. Exactly where they find these competent astrologers, unless they breed them like mice in their laboratories is a mystery. There may - possibly - be 500 competent astrologers in the world; but it is most certain that scientists lack either the inclination or the necessary criteria to determine who they are. Even more certain is that most astrologers of any competence will have better things with which to occupy themselves than running through mazes for the edification of men in white coats.

Astrology, as a true science (or art), is not open to testing by the criteria of modern 'science': the tools with which such testing might validly be done simply do not exist. Modern science deals with quantity, true science (or art) deals with quality. No amount of quantity can comprehend distinctions of quality: we might as well judge the value of the Bible by the number of pages it contains. For this reason, we lament not only the mockery that is the scientific testing of astrologers, but the more pernicious growth of 'scientific astrology', in which even astrologers who claim to work within the tradition justify their conclusions by producing statistics. As Rene Guenon explains, 'Statistics really consist only in the counting up of a greater or lesser number of facts which are all supposed to be exactly alike, for if they were not so their addition would be meaningless.'. In astrology more than anywhere the meaninglessness of statistical study is plainly apparent: if the basis of astrology is that whatever happens in any given moment in time has the particular qualities of that particular moment, where do we find the identical facts to which we may add our results in order to produce our statistics?''.

Hello Draco,
One thing that I cannot stand is people who refuse to do research on any subject before making claims on things they do not understand. This is like going to the polls to vote against a political leader without observing or reading the fact which supports that person. It's frusterating to me to see people like the skeptics who claim they are scientists, but they are not, just silly people.
Yes John Frawley is brilliant in his findings! I value the information I get out of this forum. It's sure is great to be here to just read the many replies from astrologers here!
Thanks again!

Scientists are inborn with a nature that needs to test and prove theories, and for this they need to have a critical discriminating mind, or we would find an "explanation" for every strange anomaly in life. For Scientists they love graphs, test tubes, working with matter and anything which has a measurable effect with results being repeated and proven. However, Scientists aren't so far removed from astrologer's as I believe we are both ruled by the same planet, and fall under the same umbrella (Uranus). We are not as different from astronomers either our other critical friends, who hate it passionately when people confuse astrology with astronomy (the nerve of it ). Astrologer's and astronomers are both interested in the universe, but our interest is purely observing the effect planets have on human lives, while scientists and astronomers want to understand-the world at large and explain all the data of planets: what stuff their made of, how fast they travel etc.

I don't think scientists are all "bad guys" even the one's who mock us and say we are deficient in brain cells, because in truth there is no concrete evidence for astrology, and even if there was would it be made public. Scientists, astrologers, and astronomers are all like cousins from the same Uranian family. The "Scientists" study the world with the focus purely on trying to improve our lives through better health, and generally making progress as human beings, because being "human" we have a major flaw to begin with, we are born with limitations and an in built death clock. Scientist keep busy by curing every illness and defect until the perfect human race is born (I was watching I. Robot the other night can you tell ) Astrologers have the same goal in some respects as we are trying to make people more self-aware, to fully realize our human potential.

Science is very much based on what is proved through rigid scientific methods. Astrology is a symbolic art, describing human potential and the major flaw in our study is that humans are always difficult to predict! (especially the Piscean variety like me ) I can react to every stimulus out there, I would make a terrible lab rat. It seems Scientists see astrologer's as "superstitious", and this horrible image of us has been further circulated through tacky magazines with mystic meg. Sun sign columns "predicting" whether this will be a good day or not, it never does any justice to the serious practitioners, but as a child I always looked forward to the Sunday magazine and Mystic Megs astrology page , see the Irony: sun sign columns confuse people to the real depth of the subject and yet at the same time encourage people to look more into astrology, through picking up a textbook at the local bookstore to see what all this "superstitious" stuff is really all about. The major Flaw again is scientific tests being done on Sun signs, this really is a joke, the scientific researcher in question clearly hasn't even took more than 10 minutes researching what an astrological chart actually is.

Personally I have done a few small, little and miniscule research studies , and everyone should do one just to see how difficult astrology is to prove, and you realize what your up against when the critical gaze of the scientific community read your findings, you would be laughed at for insubstantial proof. However, I admit I do enjoy devising astro signatures, and reading research articles, it was a sad day when astrodatabank lost funding, and the site could no longer run, although the upside is we all do get to benefit from having all the astrological data for free to improve our astrological skills. To be honest I am not set against research in astrology like others, to me astrology is an art, however my Mars in Aquarius 6th square Uranus in Scorpio 3rd. Saturn rising in Virgo opposing Sun, offers an experimental research mind, I can sit laboriously and do boring input.

I don't think significant funding would be put forward for proving astrology, and whether we would get the results we want or just further jokeS made at our expense, we are against "rational" scientists who will do their **** best to disprove every theory or astrological result you come up with. Plus every astrological factor can never be taken in isolation which makes it doubly hard to find results. Often the aim of most tests is to simply disprove something. Astrologer's taking part in any research would have to be trained first in how to conduct a proper research, but I agree with Frawley in this respect; why should we be jumping through hoops in the hope that the scientific community will accept us.

I think most people have read the articles ridiculing astrologer's and how they couldn't pick out an accurate "serial killers chart", one writer of such an article particularly enjoyed the fact that one astrologer commented that the astrological chart of the psychopath would be an individual who could work with children. The mocking in the article was distasteful, but realistically do we expect a different reaction.

Scientist's even turn against their own kind, if one of the herd comes out with an "idea" which seems unprovable and to put it nicely crazy, the rest of the community laugh and ridicule the Scientist, even to the point of outing him/her from the "community" of scientists with their "shared ideals". However watch how their opinions reverse if the crazy idea works out in practical theory and is proven to be true!, often they will turn their previously fixed viewpoint around and call the crazy man a genius, leadng the way for the progression of man!.

Scientists do have fixed opinions, just watch them in debate with their cold detachment. It's not so far removed from astrologer's, I know from personal experience the amount of disagreements which occur on forums with astrologer's who have their own "shared ideals" but they violently oppose each other over such minor details as (orbs, house systems, detriments, outer planets include or not traditional vs Moderns, sex in 5th or 8th etc). If you stand back and view it all from an outsiers point of view it is ridiculous, if your involved in it it's difficult to pull away, it's like all you are focused on is proving a point, you appear as the most stubborn minded individual, just like the scientists who won't open their minds to astrology. Saturn and Uranus influence perhaps. You see it in all 11th house pursuits in politics, science, astrology etc. Wherever a group is formed the dynamics are the same.

Last night I was up late running graphs on my Kepler software, they were transit graphs I was seeing if the graph line shot up when major bodies (Planets) hit my Asc and personal planets etc. I must be the most boring person in the world as I found this interesting to do . The graph didn't show significant growth as I thought it would, it showed peaks at the time of my move last year/when I got a job/conflict at work/job ending. I was a bit worried or maybe relieved that the graph line was decreasing now, my life is fading away ahhhhh lol.



The question is: Can astrology be tested in this way? Apparently from what I have read there have been some astrological research works published, but they haven't been on the end of the rigorous testing of "Science" it would need to have consistent provable results. Often even astrologer's are unsure of how a transit will influence our lives what event will transpire. This harshly magnifies our own limitations in astrology.

I have been busy looking at Mars in Aquarius through all the 12 houses, this is a personal interest as I have Mars in Aquarius 6th house, there were some cool jobs for this placement dealing with either computers, aviation, Science, motorbikes, astrology data collector, and a man who tried to blow up Hitler, but the explosives were not powerful enough, and he lost a hand too. I was happy to see the freedom fighter spirit, along with the technological and progressive spirit in my Martian friends.

In Frawleys words you could almost taste the antagonism towards the scientists. It's hard for individuals who take a lot of pride in their mental abilities to be called "fools" (Uranian Jibe), to not feel it on some level, it kind of comes as part of the package. Don't expect the scientific community to embrace us, just focus on your own understanding of astrology, through our time honoured methods. Astrology has survived over a long period of time, it almost spoils my street cred to be learning such an old and ancient subject . Whatever others think the fact is Astrology is alive and kicking despite the criticism it receives, so let the art of astrology speak for itself, you can't force this knowledge through laboratory testing, and maybe it is best left the way it is, who knows.

I am writing my dissertation on usefulness of astrology for meaning creation and in my literature review I had to review lots of research that has been conducted on astrology in the past 60 years. Most of the empiric testing took place in 1980-90s, but it started as early as 1930s. The empiric research shows predominantly negative results, although there were some positive results and some conflicting too. But the positive are usually ignored, explained away, or criticized. I've been wondering why empiric research does not validate astrology, b/c our experiences more definitely validates it, and I think it has to do with a general scientific materialistic (so called natural science) paradigm. In other words astrology can not fit into it, b/c it is of different nature. First of all, astrology works as a system, and it suggests that there are forces beyond materialistic worldview, so it cannot fit into the paradigm that only accepts visible, and countable results and does not want to consider possibility of mythical or spiritual causes. Astrology is not exact, b/c it deals with human behavior changeable and often unaccountable. Although I personally think that astrology should be testable with empiric methods, something in their application has to be different. I'm interested in what other think about it, b/c I have to write my criticism on empiric approach to astrology in my dissertation. BTW, one of the most active researchers of astrology was Michael Gauquelin from France, you can look up his materials here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Gauquelin

This is an eternal question, along with whether astrology is a science.

I agree with Draco, you cannot apply scientific methodology to explain astrology, neither can it be explained in scientific terms.

In my opinion astrology is neither a science, nor an art form, but is a tool.