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Young people are flocking to astrology

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Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#961

Post by skissane »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #377
varjag wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no qualitative difference between belief in astrology and any of the world's religions. Not saying you're not entitled in disregarding astrology believers but the cut-off point is completely arbitrary and dare I say irrational.

To me there is an a huge difference. I can accept religions, which are adding axioms that aren't falsifiable, and that are usually taught to a person when he is a child. And religions had their roles in shaping society for good. I can accept conspiracy theories and disbelieving the known consensus. I just can't accept a person who, in the age where we know exactly how planets move and what they are, decided to believ…

You speak as if religion and astrology are two different things.

Not all Hindus believe in astrology, but very many do, and within contemporary Hinduism it is very much mainstream belief. And many Hindus who believe in astrology would reject the idea of drawing any firm boundary between their astrological beliefs and the rest of their religion. [0]

Hinduism is not the only religion to promote astrology: it is also a very common thing in contemporary Western Neopaganism/Wicca/etc. While contemporary Christianity is (with rare exception) anti-astrology, it was much more accepting of it in the Middle Ages, even into the early modern period – "papal astrologer" was once a real job description.

[0] https://iskconeducationalservices.org/HoH/lifestyle/expressi...

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#962

Post by Tainnor »

squirtlebonflow wrote: post #126
Given_47 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea the 538 stuff (at least that audience) is a prime example of the McNamara fallacy[0]. It’s easy for people to find comfort in what can/is being measured and appoint it as objective truth, and consequently disregard anything that can’t be easily quantified. Like u alluded to, people like to at least feel in control. And in the case of astrology it manifests in being able to have a simple explanation for things. An…

Because nothing really ever happens because of random chance. Everything has a reason, and to pretend it happened because of random chance is to say you don't care enough what the reason was to try to figure it out.

Quantum mechanics, at least, seems to indicate that certain things happen if not for "no reason" then at least not for any reason that we can discern in any sort of way.

But beyond that I think your comment misses the larger point: it's exceedingly rare for something to happen for "a reason", most things, even in a deterministic universe, happen due to the combination of multiple factors. Sometimes we can model the cause and effect in simple terms with some success, but in other situations (e.g. wheather forecasts) we deal with nonlinear and chaotic systems that we can't really predict very well.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#963

Post by davidguetta »

Mandatory plug: my personal website with a FastAPI stack

https://arcadia-astrology.com/en/

And yeah i do believe in it. Not the basic ones with newspaper horoscope but the full analysis of the 12 planets and hous placement.

Why ? I've seen a few people including myself being able to tell to SEVERAL PEOPLE "no you're not born at that hour" and after verifyg, these people indeed were born 1 hour later of earlier.

Is it weird and not really that planets impact people ? Yes but I do believe there's enough room in science and especially in quantum mechanics to allow for that kind of non verifiable forces to take place. Another real question is "why not" ? Basic answer is that it allows us to not just be a simple animals, but influenced by 12 "archetypes" / "primordial forces"

How can I use it ? YOu don't NEED it in life. The best consequence of believing in astrology is a good philosophy of life, not actually getting rich or something like this.

What's next. The best would be to be able to prove it. And it's possible ! take a trained astrologer, ask him to find which chart correspond to who. ON a long enough sample the probability it works is good enough.

Roast me

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#964

Post by za3faran »

jemmyw wrote: post #956
za3faran wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just nuances, it's entire straw man fallacies. They don't understand basic Islamic tenants and claims, let alone advanced topics like Kalam, and then they attempt to argue against it, making a mockery out of themselves. Details do matter, because they lump all religions together and attempt to argue against them as a whole, not realizing that there exist core differences among them, even if there is potentia…

While I agree that it's bad to spread misinformation that may be harmful, I'll again appeal to you that it doesn't matter a great deal to the audience of this particular book. If the argument is that the fundamental underpinning of all these religions is untrue, unreasonable, or directionally opposite to modern science then the details are not important. To put it another way, if you read the book and you are religio…

> If the argument is that the fundamental underpinning of all these religions is untrue, unreasonable, or directionally opposite to modern science then the details are not important.

And that argument is fundamentally flawed, and is the point I'm trying to make. While it may apply to other religions, it does not apply to Islam. This is where Dawkins and his ilk show their ignorance and fall flat, and falsifies their entire approach. What appears to them as (or them falsely assuming to be) underpinnings, isn't, if I can put it in another way.

I don't see the parallel to the example you gave. Once you're inside a religion, then you can discuss its details and nuances like the examples you gave. That's a completely orthogonal discussion however. Dawkins and the neo-atheist movement are arguing core basics like the existence of God, then using some fallacies that some religions commit to discredit every religion. See the problem there?

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#965

Post by jemmyw »

za3faran wrote: post #964
jemmyw wrote: post #956

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that it's bad to spread misinformation that may be harmful, I'll again appeal to you that it doesn't matter a great deal to the audience of this particular book. If the argument is that the fundamental underpinning of all these religions is untrue, unreasonable, or directionally opposite to modern science then the details are not important. To put it another way, if you read the book and you are religio…

> If the argument is that the fundamental underpinning of all these religions is untrue, unreasonable, or directionally opposite to modern science then the details are not important. And that argument is fundamentally flawed, and is the point I'm trying to make. While it may apply to other religions, it does not apply to Islam. This is where Dawkins and his ilk show their ignorance and fall flat, and falsifies their…

Sorry you've kind of lost me. Islam has a god and heaven as a fundamental part doesn't it? The argument is not that there's no Christian God, it's that there are no gods of any kind and the preposition of humanity to make up mythological religions for various reasons. All religions fall into this argument.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#966

Post by gambiting »

bitsage wrote: post #866
gambiting wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> they know it happened because people saw him both dying and living afterwards, so it boils down to whether you believe their accounts. I come from a religious background, born and raised catholic, and even in our indoctrinating upbringing it was made clear that the new testament isn't eyewitness testimony. It's a written story of something someone said. Given the age of the material this is the best we're going to…

Wikipedia is incredibly biased when it comes to certain topics, especially anything pertaining to Jesus. The irony is, the section you have quoted doesn’t even have a source attached! More reading: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

Ok, is what I said wrong then? It's literally what I've been told by catholic priests as well - Wikipedia was just the easiest source to link here.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#967

Post by radicalbyte »

jacquesm wrote: post #411
radicalbyte wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How though? At least here (NL) the rewards aren't great until you get very senior, which is hard to do with a background in Software Engineering?

Hm, I'm in NL as well and made the switch 15 years ago, compared to what I made writing software I regret not doing it much earlier. Note that 'finance' is a pretty wide area, I would suggest to see if you can work your way into some VC fund at the associate level with that background.

Thanks. That's certainly worth looking into; I switched to freelancing a decade ago and am now at the ceiling as an Engineering Lead and despite still being very effective as a hands-on engineer (coding for 30 years does that) am far more effective in a more strategic role.

I have friends who work in the M&A world (doing due diligence, C-level advise etc) both here in NL (you'll probably know them) and in the US/CA (in identity/credentials), guess I should have a chat with them :-)

But first I'm going to spend a few months doing something good - seeing if we can actually fix interoperability in healthcare in the EU. Lots of interesting things happening in that space ;-)

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#968

Post by [deleted] »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #936
commonlisp94 wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humanism (essentially, "be excellent to each other") That's definitely not what humanism means. No I don't think this conversation will lead anywhere. Goodbye.

...says the person who doesn't realize atheism is a-theism, or that theism refers to a god, not just any belief or concept you want it seems you have no point that isn't based on pedantry, arguing semantics, trying to redefine theism, or falsely and failingly conflating a non-magical concept with a magical belief I would have liked for you to respond to the subject of my posts instead, but since you couldn't: bye, fr…

[deleted]

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#969

Post by 101011 »

photochemsyn wrote: post #62
101011 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little bit incredulous reading this statement. In no world are those outlets in the same ballpark as Russian or Chinese state media. Just because a new source has a tendency towards bias, doesn't mean that it isn't reliable. There are a small handful of news organizations that make a best effort towards the truth - and WaPo, NYTimes, and WSJ haven't won as many Pulitzers as they have by being unreliable.

If it was the Russian or Chinese governments deciding who gets the Pulitzers, would you be so sanguine?

No, for a myriad of reasons. Not the least of which being that investigative reporters have been systematically silenced within those countries, which is well-documented across a number of sources.

And to top it off, the US government isn't deciding who gets Pulitzers - that's an award granted by a private ivy league school.

Re: Young people are flocking to astrology

#970

Post by catlover76 »

rapsacnz wrote: post #142
ZainRiz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge with books like The God Delusion is that it's barely one step above strawman arguments. 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 disagre…

It doesn't matter how sophisticated your argument is if it's resting on something as flimsy as "I believe in god because god says he's real".

Sounds like you aren't familiar with any of the arguments in question. This comment is dripping in ignorance.
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