Astrology - the secret of the universe or just a load of obviously made-up tosh?

Beruthiel · 11-02-2013 04:24PM

robindch wrote: »

Created to hold the astrological part of Ratzinger's resignation thread.

You're such a big meanie!

robindch · 11-02-2013 04:26PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

Astrology came first, and Astronomy came after it.

Funny, I always had astronomy down as male what with all those telescopes, rockets and other long, pointy things.

General Relativity · 11-02-2013 04:27PM

robindch wrote: »

Funny, I always had astronomy down as male what with all those telescopes, rockets and other long, pointy things.

Sexist!

Aquarius34 · 11-02-2013 04:27PM

Beruthiel wrote: »

You're such a big meanie!

Here's another one for you Beruthiel, the owners of this website ain't Irish;)

jimmymal · 11-02-2013 04:27PM

Can we get a thread of the day over here please!?!

Need more knowledge of how life can only really be understood by one who sees the world from a pre-science pov.
Keep it up Aquarius, i feel you might teach these ignorant scoundrels a lesson eventually.

seamus · 11-02-2013 04:28PM

When are the comfy chairs and bags of popcorn arriving to this thread?

I'm really hoping Aquarius will stick around for this. I know this isn't the Atheism & Astrology forum, but he seems so sure that most of us have no idea what astrology is really about, I'm hoping he will provide the information we need to get educated.

endacl · 11-02-2013 04:28PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

Here's another one for you Beruthiel, the owners of this website ain't Irish;)

Are they aliens?

Zillah · 11-02-2013 04:28PM

Isn't it weird that people can spend their whole lives dedicated to understanding how the universe works, attending full time education at third level, getting doctorates and spending hundreds of billions of euro on telescopes, experiments, satellites, probes and advanced theoretical models, and entirely fail to realise that the real answers were easily acquired by knowing when someone was born and what happens to line up in the sky based on our arbitrary perspective?

Aquarius34, I'm sorry, but you're a sham of an expert. You have casually acquired knowledge of nonsensical but internally consistent poppycock. The reason we mock what you believe is not that we're small minded, its that we have education. After centuries of dedication there's actually very little that can be learned easily any more. It takes decades of effort and extraordinary sums of money to learn new things about the universe these days. It's really really hard. The relative alignment of the sun with different stars is completely irrelevant - they're too far from each other to have any tangible effect, even through gravity. The sun doesn't even move, we do. We're the ones spinning. We're the ones rotating around the sun.

Not that it matters. You think aliens controlled the development of life on this planet. You're clearly not attached to facts or reality in any way. You're like a kid playing make-believe in the garden, and you'll get very stroppy when you're told you have to come in for dinner. You've developed a defense mechanism of condescending superiority because you've no other response to the fact that everyone else on the planet knows you're lost in a daydream, divorced from reality.

The "ancients" didn't have secret knowledge, or great powers. That's why their civilisation was a fraction the scale and power of ours, why their women died in childbirth and why they couldn't treat bacterial infections.

The real world isn't nearly as whimsical or dramatic as your fantasy, but it is filled with its own amazing sorts of beauty if you could get over the need for magic.

Aquarius34 · 11-02-2013 04:29PM

Zillah wrote: »

Isn't it weird that people can spend their whole lives dedicated to understanding how the universe works, attending full time education at third level, getting doctorates and spending hundreds of billions of euro on telescopes, experiments, satellites, probes and advanced theoretical models, and entirely fail to realise that the real answers were easily acquired by knowing when someone was born and what happens to line up in the sky based on our arbitrary perspective?

Aquarius34, I'm sorry, but you're a sham of an expert. You have casually acquired knowledge of nonsensical but internally consistent poppycock. The reason we mock what you believe is not that we're small minded, its that we have education. After centuries of dedication there's actually very little that can be learned easily any more. It takes decades of effort and extraordinary sums of money to learn new things about the universe these days. It's really really hard. The relative alignment of the sun with different stars is completely irrelevant - they're too far from each other to have any tangible effect, even through gravity. The sun doesn't even move, we do. We're the ones spinning. We're the ones rotating around the sun.

Not that it matters. You think aliens controlled the development of life on this planet. You're clearly not attached to facts or reality in any way. You're like a kid playing make-believe in the garden, and you'll get very stroppy when you're told you have to come in for dinner. You've developed a defense mechanism of condescending superiority because you've no other response to the fact that everyone else on the planet knows you're lost in a daydream, divorced from reality.

The "ancients" didn't have secret knowledge, or great powers. That's why their civilisation was a fraction the scale and power of ours, why their women died in childbirth and they they couldn't treat bacterial infections.

The real world isn't nearly as whimsical or dramatic as your fantasy, but it is filled with its own amazing sorts of beauty if you could get over the need for magic.

You learned it all in school right?

Aquarius34 · 11-02-2013 04:30PM

endacl wrote: »

Are they aliens?

i'll let this one drag for a while. I will enjoy this one!

endacl · 11-02-2013 04:31PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

You learned it all in school right?

Not all of it. But I did learn how to spot nonsense. Were you out that day?

Aquarius34 · 11-02-2013 04:33PM

endacl wrote: »

Not all of it. But I did learn how to spot nonsense. Were you out that day?

Yes all of it, you did what you're told. You can't spot even your own nonsense or detect your own arrogance.

Lingua Franca · 11-02-2013 04:33PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

This thread is hopeless and it's like clucking straws for me at this point.

This kind:

or this:

I think from your posts it's more the latter, am I right?

Lingua Franca · 11-02-2013 04:34PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

Yes all of it, you did what you're told. You can't spot even your own nonsense or detect your own arrogance.

Indeed, we could all take lessons in rationality and humility from a fine mind such as yours.

endacl · 11-02-2013 04:35PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

Yes all of it, you did what you're told. You can't spot even your own nonsense or detect your own arrogance.

Have we met?

robindch · 11-02-2013 04:36PM

Zillah wrote: »

It takes decades of effort and extraordinary sums of money to learn new things about the universe these days. It's really really hard.

Just a brief aside, but on foot of the NASA Johnson Style Gangnam parody, snowflake (six years old) told me last weekend that when she grows up, she wants to be a NASA engineer. She got a special treat for that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sar5WT76kE

Bannasidhe · 11-02-2013 04:36PM

robindch wrote: »

Created to hold the astrological part of Ratzinger's resignation thread.

I finally start a thread that gets loads of posts and the bam - 0ver 60 of them get shunted off to a new thread :mad:

Why didn't my horoscope warn me this would happen?

Maybe it did but I didn't understand what Mercury rising in Uranus meant...

Either way I am not happy with this turn of events. Not Happy At All.

*Shakes fist at Russell Grant*

Aquarius34 · 11-02-2013 04:37PM

Lingua Franca wrote: »

Indeed, we could all take lessons in rationality and humility from a fine mind such as yours.

Sure you'll learn a thing or too, and one thing is for sure, you'll never forget me. (inserts smiley face)

seamus · 11-02-2013 04:37PM

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Maybe it did but I didn't understand what Mercury rising in Uranus meant...

It means you have a very old-fashioned thermometer.

Bannasidhe · 11-02-2013 04:39PM

seamus wrote: »

It means you have a very old-fashioned thermometer.

Which, topically, is in the shape of a lizard.

endacl · 11-02-2013 04:39PM

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I finally start a thread that gets loads of posts and the bam - 0ver 60 of them get shunted off to a new thread :mad:

Why didn't my horoscope warn me this would happen?

Maybe it did but I didn't understand what Mercury rising in Uranus meant...

Either way I am not happy with this turn of events. Not Happy At All.

*Shakes fist at Russell Grant*

You made a magic bonus thread. Which will nicely replace the specious nonsense thread when that one hits 10k. And we already have the aliens/astrology version of mickrock lined up.

Nice one, says I.

;-)

Lingua Franca · 11-02-2013 04:39PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

Sure you'll learn a thing or too, and one thing is for sure, you'll never forget me. (inserts smiley face)

Yeah, like yer man from last year. And the one before that... what was their name again? Sorry, there's so many idiots act the condescending big man in here and then run off with their tails between their legs they all kinds mush into one. You're the young earth creationist, right? No, what am I thinking, you're clucking straws man!

Your legacy will be clucking straws. But I'm sure the planetary alignments already warned you of that.

Bannasidhe · 11-02-2013 04:40PM

endacl wrote: »

You made a magic bonus thread. Which will nicely replace the specious nonsense thread when that one hits 10k. And we already have the aliens/astrology version of mickrock lined up.

Nice one, says I.

;-)

*slightly mollified*

robindch · 11-02-2013 04:41PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

You can't spot even your own nonsense or detect your own arrogance.

Lingua Franca wrote: »

Indeed, we could all take lessons in rationality and humility from a fine mind such as yours.

Children, toys back in prams, please.

Zillah · 11-02-2013 04:42PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

You learned it all in school right?

No..NO not at all! School gave me a fairly thorough grounding in physics and biology, which put in clearer context lots of stuff I had seen and found fascinating in books and TV shows and things like that. After that I watched tons of documentary films, read books, articles online and more time on wikipedia than I can count. It takes a long long time to teach yourself to see the bigger picture. I've got a well rounded picture of our place on the planet, the planet's place in the solar system, the solar system's place in the galaxy, how our galaxy relates to other galaxies - and then there's the context in time: How it all started with the Big Bang and developed from there, how superhot gas slowly cool and formed clouds, which grew dense and formed massive stars, that lived and died billions of years ago, and in their fusion hearts made the elements of which we are composed, leading to new stars and planets and chemistry sufficiently complex to allow life to form and evolve, how environmental influences shave off the rough edges created by mutation. It's a really amazing picture when you can zoom out far enough in your head to take it all in at once.

I don't reject your stories about aliens and astrology because I am close minded or suppressed, I reject them because they are silly and don't match the facts of reality. Yours is a small story, told from a perspective of ignorance and credulity. I reject the claims of astrology in the same way I reject the claims of a four year old that says he built a rocket and went to space - full of wonder and ignorance. Unlike a four year old, you do not engender a sense of affection for it.

Aquarius34 · 11-02-2013 04:45PM

Zillah wrote: »

No..NO not at all! School gave me a fairly thorough grounding in physics and biology, which put in clearer context lots of stuff I had seen and found fascinating in books and TV shows and things like that. After that I watched tons of documentary films, read books, articles online and more time on wikipedia than I can count. It takes a long long time to teach yourself to see the bigger picture. I've got a well rounded picture of our place on the planet, the planet's place in the solar system, the solar system's place in the galaxy, how our galaxy relates to other galaxies - and then there's the context in time: How it all started with the Big Bang and developed from there, how superhot gas slowly cool and formed clouds, which grew dense and formed massive stars, that lived and died billions of years ago, and in their fusion hearts made the elements of which we are composed, leading to new stars and planets and chemistry sufficiently complex to allow life to form and evolve, how environmental influences shave off the rough edges created by mutation. It's a really amazing picture when you can zoom out far enough in your head to take it all in at once.

I don't reject your stories about aliens and astrology because I am close minded or suppressed, I reject them because they are silly and don't match the facts of reality. Yours is a small story, told from a perspective of ignorance and credulity. I reject the claims of astrology in the same way I reject the claims of a four year old that says he built a rocket and went to space - full of wonder and ignorance. Unlike a four year old, you do not engender a sense of affection for it.

What about your own grounding?
Your own backbone?
Your own mind?
Your own questioning?
Your own thoughts?

But wait, can't support yourself, have to get brainwashed in school. Better yet get a square box hat in college, to make it all more concise and intense.

11-02-2013 04:47PM

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Maybe it did but I didn't understand what Mercury rising in Uranus meant...

lol

Zillah · 11-02-2013 04:47PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

What about your own grounding?
Your own backbone?
Your own mind?
Your own questioning?
Your own thoughts?

But wait, can't support yourself, have to get brainwashed in school. Better yet get a square box hat in college, to make it all more concise and intense.

Where does your information come from?

endacl · 11-02-2013 04:48PM

Aquarius34 wrote: »

What about your own grounding?
Your own backbone?
Your own mind?
Your own questioning?
Your own thoughts?

But wait, can't support yourself, have to get brainwashed in school. Better yet get a square box hat in college, to make it all more concise and intense.

Serious question. WTF are you talking about? Emphasis on WTF.

Bannasidhe · 11-02-2013 04:49PM

Zillah wrote: »

Where does your information come from?

The Stars.

Pay attention or you will never learn.

Astrology - the secret of the universe or just a load of obviously made-up tosh?

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