to think that anynoe who believes in star signs is a complete numpty?

[bettybosseye]

I mean it's so clearly such a great stinking heap of horse shit, how can anyone actually believe it?
Another mum at playgroup today was telling me what kind of personality my 9 month old will have based solely on her star sign.
All pleasant enough stuff but she actually believed it.
What's wrong with people?

[TheCoalitionNeedsYou]

YANBU - It is shit for cunts that prays on the vulnerable like all this crap.

[thehairybabysmum]

What Charlie said. I cycled past a car with an Alpha Course sticker in it today and my first thought was 'muppet'.

Other posters are right that it's a good idiot detector though (same for the car stickers for me )

[donkeyderby]

Star signs are harmless nonsense and tomorrow's chip paper. What I really can't stand are people who harp on about 'good energy'. What IS good energy? Oh, and the worried-well who try and convert me to alternative medicine. I always feel like I'm being duped and preached to by religious loons

[clam]

I had DS's chart done when he was a baby. DH read it and declared it a complete load of bollocks. I sort of agree with him, a bit.
However, I found the chart recently, having completely forgotten about its existence, and made DH read it again, now DS has grown up a bit and developed his personality. It was him to an absolute T - a blueprint of his character. DH read it, went quiet and could only muster up a "bloody hell, that's weird."

[Snorbs]

TCNY, your post was rather ambiguous. Can you clarify how you really feel about astrology?

[UnquietDad]

I'm going to give the elephant in the room a little John Noakes nudge here.

It's amusing that we can all huff and puff and snigger and generally agree that astrology is bunk - as indeed we should - with precious little controversy, on the grounds that it is totally unscientific, makes no sense and has no basis in evidence of any sort. There are no serious defenders of it here, only people who quite reasonably want to say they know it is a load of crap but they find it amusing/fun.

...and yet the minute anybody ventures to say the same about God, on one of the perennial religion/atheism threads on here - something for which there is exactly the same (i.e. zero) scientific basis and the same (i.e. zero) evidence as there is for astrology, several of the usual suspects turn up and start getting terribly hot under the collar.

[GrimmaTheNome]

Oh no, UQD, you're late in on this - LaurieFairyonthetreeEatsCake already explained religion is different because they know its unscientific and unknowable. So that's ok then.

[UnquietDad]

Ah yes - the old "unfathomable to many" hogwash! i.e. "You are not intelligent/sensitive/deeeeeeeeeeep enough to Perceive What I Perceive..."

[PlanetLizard]

There is evidence for religion and it is not necessarily unscientific. But isn't that really for another thread?

[UnquietDad]

There's plenty of evidence for religion. It undeniably exists! Just none for what religion is based on.

[PlanetLizard]

There's evidence for what it's based on too :)

[TheCoalitionNeedsYou]

You meant stuff made up to explain phenomena before we were able to explain them with rational methods and then social structures to embed power in elites? Yes there's plenty of evidence for that.

[seeker]

No there isn't. That's the point!

The people who invented Christianity cleverly put in a clause about not testing God.

[GwendolineMaryLacey]

People have always needed something else to believe in. Whhy do you think religion took off? We kid ourselves that we are too knowledgeable and sophisticated these days but we're not, we're still the same. We think we wouldn't go to see the Christians go for the lions? Wrong. We just have television equivalents.

[PlanetLizard]

No, I mean historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Won't discuss it more in this thread because it's meant to be about astrology. Happy to talk on threads about religion instead :)

[wolfhound]

Someone I'd met 5 mins earlier asked about my due date and DCs birthdays last week, then said 'Oh no, Leo and Cancer, what a disaster, they won't get on at all.' Didn't bother me, but I thought she was rude as well as a fool!

[seeker]

There is historical evidence for the existence and death of a prophet called Jesus. There is no historical evidence for his resurrection. There can't be. You can't have historical evidence for something that is a physical impossibility!

[CoteDAzur]

YANBU. It is an instant giveaway to Intellectual shortcomings.

[Remotew]

Forget reading the horoscopes in the papers, they are just made up. As for 1/12 of the population having similar personality traits depending on when they were born, not sure, I used to read up on this stuff when I was a teen and I guess if you look hard enough you might spot them.

I think there may be something in having an individual chart reading, i.e place and time of birth as this will be unique to you, more or less. I knew a very intelligent guy who was divorced and looking for the right person and had a reading done, he met someone as predicted but that might have been a self fulfilling phrophecy.

Agree that Leos are the best people .

[slug]

"Someone decrying astrology to me explained that he believed personality traits could have been influenced in utero by what the mother ate when pregnant, and that since until fairly recently everything you ate would be seasonal and local, the in-utero environment would be greatly influenced by the foods available so that could account for supposed shared traits to those born around the same time."

Since a Scorpio in the Northern Hemisphere is thought to have the same personality traits as a Scorpio in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are reversed, that theory is a crock of shite also.

[TheCoalitionNeedsYou]

I think the difference between Astrology (and allied fraudulent bullshit) and Religion, is that it is possible to practice a religion and still remain perfectly rational, ethical and intelligent in other parts of your life, especailly with some of the more 'liberal' interpretations.

So I am prepared to forgive my friends and other people I meet this fairly common and inoffensive character flaw.


Whereas if I meet some one who introduces themselves as an Astologer or a 'Healer' I know that they are either a fool or a charlatan, and if someone believes them they are a fool.

[Blessings3]

Agree with Cote - only the slightly dim or emotionally needy believe this stuff and #I personally include religion, reki and homoeopathic tosh.

[sussexmum]

Def YANBU. I read that since they charted all those different signs 1000's of years ago all the planets have moved a little bit so what was Aquarius is now Pisces etc. no wonder I'm confused....

[GrimmaTheNome]

TCNY - you have a point, and in some ways it may indeed hinge on Lauries distinction - they know that religion is a matter of faith so normal rules of rationality and evidence don't apply but they are still capable of applying normal rules to other stuff.

So I think I'm saying, religion is still a heap of HS but believing in it doesn't automatically mean you're an entire numpty.

[GrimmaTheNome]

(of course some religious people are total numpties, e.g. creationists)