Young people are flocking to astrology

Maybe the person was just wanting to know more about you. It's incredible that you would take someone being interested in a minor thing as an opportunity to flex how right and correct you are. Let someone be incorrect, or laugh about minor things with you, or enjoy your company. Don't take situations like that to try and show everyone how much more logical you are - nobody is impressed.

People in the 1930s weren't able to use the bible to predict that Israel would be created in a day in the next 20 years. There's also the doubt over how long a "day" is in the bible, so it seems more a case of it only being a prediction in hindsight.

There's a better critique here: https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/does-the-state-of-...

In my experience, when you get an individual in the right setting, there's a high likelihood you can get them to admit doubt in the reality of their own religion, upon which they may also state that they still "choose to believe" anyway because their religion gives them both a moral framework and a community.

Astrologists are usually the opposite. They start out by telling you something like "I don't know if I believe in any of it, but I find it interesting." However, upon further conversation revealing more mystical thinking, it becomes apparent that they do believe to at least a fair extent, but are just too embarrassed to reveal their belief until they know you won't act judgmental towards them.

On the face of it, yes, religions are (from my understanding) largely made up of beliefs that are just as non-scientific as astrology. The escape hatch that religions have is that they are founded on a question that is largely unprovable. What astrology is based on is a fraudulent attempt at answering questions through what should be demonstrable mechanisms, and it doesn't matter whether facts disprove every single assertion in front of their very own eyes. Hell, at least religions have largely managed to change their views on the age of the Earth and whether dinosaurs existed, even if they still get aspects of those facts wrong. Astrology doesn't adapt to new information at all.

For those reasons, I see Astrology, unlike most other religions, as a black hole of belief. If someone believes in it, I really do feel sorry for them, and I also have no interest in having a conversation with someone that irrational. Even flat-earthers, whose beliefs are just about as dumb as that of Astrology, are more interesting to talk to and will at least be able to display flawed reasoning. Astrology is about as irrational as it gets, and people whom I've known who believe in it usually are either set in their ways or are extremely gullible that you can convince them of practically anything.

Sorry, but the average religious scholar is at least 1000% smarter than Astrologists. I try to be even handed with everything, but I can't here. Astrology is just a trap.

EDIT: Another difference between Astrology and other theological beliefs is that it is not based on faith. Astrologists, once they've been convinced there's something to it, usually lack sufficient doubt. Having faith means admitting that one doesn't know for sure. In that sense, there is a certain rationality to a religion like Christianity, even if I don't think that god exists in reality. Most astrologists only speak in uncertainty because they don't want to be judged for believing something so unreasonable. It's not because they know what they don't know; they actually think that they know. Just try the next time you have a conversation with someone who says they believe in any form of Astrology; the more you talk to them, the more they will reveal their certainty. And yes, there are plenty of religious people who think they know the truth with certainty, but chances are they don't understand their own religion if that's how they think, and true belief doesn't really describe the majority of people. Most religious people have faith, if they aren't just going along with the song and dance.

Is this purely objective? Can you think of no exceptions, under any scenarios?

To add to this, I have people in my team I don't know what they look like. And I don't really care. The ones who want to switch their camera on during calls are free to do so, most people don't. So even if I decided I want to discriminate against my female colleagues based on their looks, I wouldn't be able to.

Apart from the anecdata, the problem of course exists. Women prefer taller men. And not just women. In business, taller men are more likely to be promoted:

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220825-height-discrim...

In relationships, they are ignored. Fortunately, in tech, where nobody gives a damn what you look like but how good your code is and how cooperative you are, they can feel safe and judged a bit less.