111–120 of 972 posts
The number of people in my life who have recently taken to astrology and started buying "healing" crystals is frankly disheartening. You try to argue with them they just call you toxic. I suspect it's a social virus.
I had an argument with a girl the other day who was adamant she wanted to know my star sign. I said "you tell me" and after 10 guesses I finally told her. She then went on to tell me what I must like etc - most of which was complete bollocks obviously. I told her her beliefs were akin to racism. Just because of when I was born she thought it was acceptable not to bother to treat me as an individual but as automatical…
While I agree that astrology is complete nonsense, you're not likely to win many people over when you treat stereotyping (which you've described here) and racism as equivalent.
But that's literally what people now call stereotyping: "that's racist"
My girlfriend is in the middle of her PhD program and is very intelligent but she's really into this stuff. She makes comments about it in public and I cringe. But the worst part is that half my female friends and all my gay friends love astrology. It's very weird.
Just like in any occupation, you can be good at your job, but completely bananas outside of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not saying it's new, but it's sorta fascinating - some young people have replaced religion with... astronomy.
Astronomy is not astrology
I had an argument with a girl the other day who was adamant she wanted to know my star sign. I said "you tell me" and after 10 guesses I finally told her. She then went on to tell me what I must like etc - most of which was complete bollocks obviously. I told her her beliefs were akin to racism. Just because of when I was born she thought it was acceptable not to bother to treat me as an individual but as automatical…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dawkins [1] and Hitchens’ works on religion are pop-science/culture books, not serious academic studies. Virtually no scholars in philosophy, religious studies, etc. agree with the narratives they present. Instead, I would read Taylor, Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution , and maybe Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality. 1. His non-biological work, that is.
(As an atheist who found The God Delusion to be one of the most important books I've ever read, as it gave me a solid framework of arguing in what I already considered to be true) It's okay to read more digestible books, and not serious academic studies. In fact it's more than okay -- in order to understand an academic study you likely need to do a lot of reading on the topic before hand. A pop sci/culture book is ve…
It’s the equivalent of watching a 5-hour YouTube video about programming and thinking you understand computer science, except that books by Dawkins et al are not even very good, impartial introductions to the topic. All I can say is: if the topic of religion is interesting to you, these are not good books to start with.
I also really don’t think Genealogy of Morality is all that complicated.
Edit: I just remembered this excellent book by Julian Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion. I really recommend that if you’re looking for a more nuanced but modern take of what Nietzsche thought about religion.
I had an argument with a girl the other day who was adamant she wanted to know my star sign. I said "you tell me" and after 10 guesses I finally told her. She then went on to tell me what I must like etc - most of which was complete bollocks obviously. I told her her beliefs were akin to racism. Just because of when I was born she thought it was acceptable not to bother to treat me as an individual but as automatical…
While I agree that astrology is complete nonsense, you're not likely to win many people over when you treat stereotyping (which you've described here) and racism as equivalent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dawkins [1] and Hitchens’ works on religion are pop-science/culture books, not serious academic studies. Virtually no scholars in philosophy, religious studies, etc. agree with the narratives they present. Instead, I would read Taylor, Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution , and maybe Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality. 1. His non-biological work, that is.
(As an atheist who found The God Delusion to be one of the most important books I've ever read, as it gave me a solid framework of arguing in what I already considered to be true) It's okay to read more digestible books, and not serious academic studies. In fact it's more than okay -- in order to understand an academic study you likely need to do a lot of reading on the topic before hand. A pop sci/culture book is ve…
It attacks claims made by some simple lay people, based on their half-baked understanding of their own faiths (which they never really dug into). However, people well versed in the religion don't actually make any such claims.
The arguments being debunked are ones that religious scholars themselves would have disagreed with. Such misrepresentations don't guide anyone
Sigh. No they aren’t.
The celestial objects probably have nothing to do with it besides serving as convenient and consistent identifiers, but why wouldn't the time of year of a person's birth have an effect on their development? Like if a toddler is of the age for first words in summer where long daylight and warm weather encourages interaction with more people than just immediate family vs being that age in winter where short cold days a…
Because whether your parents can provide you with quality nutrition and good education (among 10000 other factors) has much bigger impact.