An Astrology Exchange/Challenge

[PixyMisa]

Who is Black Knight?

Has anyone actually counted up the number of composers and compared it to the total?

Hey, you are the one who claimed that musical talent was ruled by Callisto in Cassiopia or something like that. Are you telling us that you didn't actually check the facts first? I am shocked!

 

[PixyMisa]

Well, that's your opinion.

No, it's established fact.

The two fishes of the astrological Pisces glyph are connected but swimming in opposite directions and symbolize the "spiritual"/immaterial world and the material world, both contained within the "water" consciousness. I see a striking analogy to E=mc2. Just substitute light for one fish, matter for the other, and Energy for the water.

Triple facepalm.

 

[PixyMisa]

Stop what? The similarities I pointed out (composers, religious figures) were entirely linked on their Sun sign, Pisces.

Except that composers and religious figures are born on every day of every month of every year, so you're wrong.

 

[GrandMasterFox]

Except that composers and religious figures are born on every day of every month of every year, so you're wrong.

Or perharps in other words, Aquila, can you give us a date where you can say there's no chance of a musician being born?

 

[dafydd]

Well, that's your opinion. The two fishes of the astrological Pisces glyph are connected but swimming in opposite directions and symbolize the "spiritual"/immaterial world and the material world, both contained within the "water" consciousness. I see a striking analogy to E=mc2. Just substitute light for one fish, matter for the other, and Energy for the water.

You are in the realms of fantasy now.

 

[dafydd]

Not necessarily, because both Virgo and Pisces can be connected to music. Virgo, an earth sign ruled by Mercury gives the technical skill and a desire for perfection, while Pisces, a Water sign, rules more of the inspiration and feeling side of music. I would also expect to find musicians in all the signs. You would really have to consider what type of music they played or wrote and relate that to the specific Sun sign or planets in their horoscopes.



I agree that all signs can produce musicians and that practice is the key to success. As mentioned above, analyzing the whole horoscope is neccessary if we want to get any insight into what planet or aspect might be related to some aspect of a person's life. It's much more complicated than just Sun signs. For example, Beethoven was a Sagittarian with an Aries Moon, both Fire signs, and when I think of the intro to his 5th symphony, I think of a very fiery energy. Chopin on the other hand wrote much more dreamy and romantic music, more fitting to his Pisces Sun and Libra Moon.

In other words astrology is useless bunk.

 

[dafydd]

Who is Black Knight? If you did not want me to make some comment about the long list of people you posted with March 12 birthday, why did you post them?
Has anyone actually counted up the number of composers and compared it to the total?

Here is the Black Knight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

The comment that I was expecting from you was something along the lines of that the day of your birth has no effect on your character or whether you turn out to be a musician or not.

 

[dafydd]

Except that composers and religious figures are born on every day of every month of every year, so you're wrong.

And what about the others on the birthday list ( Ron Jeremy for example) who did not become religious figures or composers?

 

[Aquila]

You are in the realms of fantasy now.

Rather than replying to all your comments, and before continuing with this thread I'd like to point out that you are all, like good skeptics, approaching it from the empirical point of view, while I appear to be in the land of fantasy.

Before starting this thread, Hokulele and I agreed that this thread would be more of and exchange, (although she also called it a challenge), rather than a test of astrology's validity, like on the previous thread "How astrology "works". So if you are still looking for proof of correlation perhaps you should continue that thread or wait until someone else starts another empirical challenge somewhere else. I have no desire to continue being tested and tricked just to prove to you that astrology is full of confirmation bias, vague statements and cherry picking. We all know that.

I would rather discuss astrology here as a philosophy and art, as I suggested back in my reply to Hokulele's comments on my comments on the Rufolf Smit article. From this perspective, astrology might indeed seem like a fantasy, and as Joe The Juggler noted earlier on, and in another round of debate that we had last year, astrology is really a system of magic and correspondence, rather than anything empirical.

So please don't be surprised by my use of analogy, metaphor, symbolism, references to religion or the occult, or my unconventional use of the word "logic".

As an example of a reference to religion, and in reply to an earlier question by PixyMisa about why astrologer Liz Greene did not try to predict anything about a horoscope, but rather saw it as a teaching tool, I can't help thinking of the New Testament. Do you remember how Jesus was tempted by the Devil (please don't think that I'm comparing myself to Jesus!), and the devil said that if Jesus was so great, he should turn rocks into bread (rough transcription from memory). Jesus replied that material demonstrations were not what he was trying to do ("man cannot live by bread alone"). He was trying to get people to realize that there is a spiritual dimension to life which was just as important as the material dimension. It is this spiritual dimension that I would like to discuss on this thread.

So what do I mean by "spiritual". I simply mean beyond the realm of what we normally consider material evidence. And that would apply to modern concepts in physics such as quantum mechanics, the Kaluza -Klein theory, space-time and all the lovely physics that I cannot pretend to understand but am hoping that Hokulele will help me get a grasp on.

What are you guys going to do if the Hadron Collider discovers a sub-atomic particle that has just come through another dimension, or a parallel universe? You will have discovered the "spiritual" world spoken about by all the great teachers of the past few thousand years! And it is this spiritual world, and its relationship to the physical world that the language of astrology is talking about.

So I hope we can continue talking philosophy rather than have a constant battle over evidence, like the Black Knight (thanks for the Monty Python video) and King Arthur. By the way, the second video that you posted (PixyMisa) did not open.

 

[dafydd]

Rather than replying to all your comments, and before continuing with this thread I'd like to point out that you are all, like good skeptics, approaching it from the empirical point of view, while I appear to be in the land of fantasy.

Before starting this thread, Hokulele and I agreed that this thread would be more of and exchange, (although she also called it a challenge), rather than a test of astrology's validity, like on the previous thread "How astrology "works". So if you are still looking for proof of correlation perhaps you should continue that thread or wait until someone else starts another empirical challenge somewhere else. I have no desire to continue being tested and tricked just to prove to you that astrology is full of confirmation bias, vague statements and cherry picking. We all know that.

I would rather discuss astrology here as a philosophy and art, as I suggested back in my reply to Hokulele's comments on my comments on the Rufolf Smit article. From this perspective, astrology might indeed seem like a fantasy, and as Joe The Juggler noted earlier on, and in another round of debate that we had last year, astrology is really a system of magic and correspondence, rather than anything empirical.

So please don't be surprised by my use of analogy, metaphor, symbolism, references to religion or the occult, or my unconventional use of the word "logic".

As an example of a reference to religion, and in reply to an earlier question by PixyMisa about why astrologer Liz Greene did not try to predict anything about a horoscope, but rather saw it as a teaching tool, I can't help thinking of the New Testament. Do you remember how Jesus was tempted by the Devil (please don't think that I'm comparing myself to Jesus!), and the devil said that if Jesus was so great, he should turn rocks into bread (rough transcription from memory). Jesus replied that material demonstrations were not what he was trying to do ("man cannot live by bread alone"). He was trying to get people to realize that there is a spiritual dimension to life which was just as important as the material dimension. It is this spiritual dimension that I would like to discuss on this thread.

So what do I mean by "spiritual". I simply mean beyond the realm of what we normally consider material evidence. And that would apply to modern concepts in physics such as quantum mechanics, the Kaluza -Klein theory, space-time and all the lovely physics that I cannot pretend to understand but am hoping that Hokulele will help me get a grasp on.

What are you guys going to do if the Hadron Collider discovers a sub-atomic particle that has just come through another dimension, or a parallel universe? You will have discovered the "spiritual" world spoken about by all the great teachers of the past few thousand years! And it is this spiritual world, and its relationship to the physical world that the language of astrology is talking about.

So I hope we can continue talking philosophy rather than have a constant battle over evidence, like the Black Knight (thanks for the Monty Python video) and King Arthur. By the way, the second video that you posted (PixyMisa) did not open.

Astrology has nothing to do with philosophy,it is a primitive belief that has no place in the modern world.They are searching for the Higgs Boson with the LHC,it's called physics. A constant battle over evidence? Am I supposed to believe all you say about astrology,including the self-contradictory statements,without evidence? I have a family of elves living in my garden who do my housework for me,do you believe that? The story about Jesus is just a story in an old book. If you want me to believe that a spiritual dimension exists,show me some proof,not new age waffle.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well, that's your opinion. The two fishes of the astrological Pisces glyph are connected but swimming in opposite directions and symbolize the "spiritual"/immaterial world and the material world, both contained within the "water" consciousness. I see a striking analogy to E=mc2. Just substitute light for one fish, matter for the other, and Energy for the water.

This is beyond the pale.

So if you substitute light for one fish and matter for the other fish, that gives you. . ."light and energy", nothing like the equation E=mc².

And by what rule do you make these substitutions? (Ever heard this one? "If I had some eggs, I could have ham and eggs, if I had some ham.")

You do realize that the equation describes an actual physical relationship, don't you? There's nothing mystical about it.

 

[dafydd]

This is beyond the pale.

So if you substitute light for one fish and matter for the other fish, that gives you. . ."light and energy", nothing like the equation E=mc².

And by what rule do you make these substitutions? (Ever heard this one? "If I had some eggs, I could have ham and eggs, if I had some ham.")

You do realize that the equation describes an actual physical relationship, don't you? There's nothing mystical about it.

And there is nothing mystical about the LHC either.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

From this perspective, astrology might indeed seem like a fantasy, and as Joe The Juggler noted earlier on, and in another round of debate that we had last year, astrology is really a system of magic and correspondence, rather than anything empirical.

You're at least partially misusing what I said. Yes, astrology is based on sympathetic magic, but that's the same as saying that it's fantasy. (It is NOT based on any actual correspondence. That was the point I was making.)

The trouble is, astrology makes claims that are indeed empirical. They're just false.

So please don't be surprised by my use of analogy, metaphor, symbolism, references to religion or the occult, or my unconventional use of the word "logic".

<tangent> This is a problem I've observed with many kinds of irrational beliefs. Underlying it is the rejection of the fact that there is any objective reality. Instead, believers think you are free to create your own reality by the process of perception. That is, while most of us regard perceptual illusions as errors, believers treat these illusions (everything from pareidolia wrt the constellations--even believing that the stars in a constellation are in some real relationships with one another when it might be that some of the stars in a constellation are closer to us than they are to other stars in the constellation) are real and significant.

Unfortunately, this mistaken view carries over to their use of language. Language actually works by convention. Words only have their meaning because of conventional use. Believers think they can use words in any way they want (regardless of or contrary to convention) since they're free to create their own reality.

But that's a certain way to achieve communication failure.

And it creates a lot of unnecessary frustration in these kinds of conversation. So please be careful when you use terms that have conventional meaning and real definitions, such as "light", "energy", "logic" and so on.
</tangent>

 

[dafydd]

Hear hear!

 

[dafydd]

That is, while most of us regard perceptual illusions as errors, believers treat these illusions (everything from pareidolia wrt the constellations--even believing that the stars in a constellation are in some real relationships with one another when it might be that some of the stars in a constellation are closer to us than they are to other stars in the constellation) are real and significant.

That has always been a puzzle to me.The constellations are just random patterns of stars in the sky,if we were on the other side of our galaxy the patterns would look very different.The stars are not connected to each other,so how can than they act in concert? I suppose this is something occult and mystical that we sceptics will never understand.

 

[Aquila]

That has always been a puzzle to me.The constellations are just random patterns of stars in the sky,if we were on the other side of our galaxy the patterns would look very different.The stars are not connected to each other,so how can than they act in concert? I suppose this is something occult and mystical that we sceptics will never understand.

As explained several times before, Tropical astrology has very little to do with the stars or constellations. It uses a theoretical Zodiac based on the seasons. Changes in light, along with minute changes in gravity from the Moon, could have a causal relationship, with human hormones, and therefore personality, as we briefly discussed in the other thread.

As for the continuing question of empirical evidence for correlation, in the Richard Tarnas video, he does re-ignite the controversy of the Gauquelin research. He quotes Hans Eysenk as verifying that it is valid after looking at the statistics, despite having philosophical doubts that it should be valid. Skeptics are subject to confirmation bias too.

Therefore I can't quite understand why you are all saying that the Gauquelin research is not valid.

 

[Aquila]

Further to my last post about Eysenk and Gauquelin, here is a review by Eysenk of the book "The Tenacious Mars Effect" by Suitbert Ertel and Kenneth Irving:

http://www.planetos.info/eysenck.html

"The evidence for the Mars effect is better than for most of the “facts” you will encounter in your psychology textbooks, and incomparably stronger than that for psychoanalysis; yet Freud figures in all our textbooks, Gauquelin is not mentioned! This may tell us something about psychology as a science. H.J.Eysenck, Ph.D, D.Sc., Professor Emiritus of Psychology University of London"

(from above webpage)

 

[dafydd]

As explained several times before, Tropical astrology has very little to do with the stars or constellations. It uses a theoretical Zodiac based on the seasons. Changes in light, along with minute changes in gravity from the Moon, could have a causal relationship, with human hormones, and therefore personality, as we briefly discussed in the other thread.

As for the continuing question of empirical evidence for correlation, in the Richard Tarnas video, he does re-ignite the controversy of the Gauquelin research. He quotes Hans Eysenk as verifying that it is valid after looking at the statistics, despite having philosophical doubts that it should be valid. Skeptics are subject to confirmation bias too.

Therefore I can't quite understand why you are all saying that the Gauquelin research is not valid.

Try reading about the Gauquelin research without donning the blinkers of confirmation bias and you will discover why it is not valid.Richers Tarnas can spout all the guff he likes,it does not mean that his statements are true.No evidence exists as to the effects of light and minute changes in the moon's gravitational pull on human hormones,or maybe you have some? Saying if and could have will get us nowhere,if my auntie had balls she'd be my uncle.

 

[dafydd]

If you are interested in finding out about the flaws in the Gauquelin study.
http://www.skepsis.nl/mars.html

 

[Sledge]

Yes, Eysenck thought some wacky stuff in his later years. Shame there's no proof for it, or that saying "Well this guy believed it" isn't in any way proof of a claim.