Look Up in the Sky!

“Astrology – Fraud or Superstition?” by Chaz Bufe, 2002

This small pamphlet is part of a series of pamphlets on religion or anarchism that May Day just got in.  Each is $1.  If you’ve thought of astrology as a harmless cultural oddity, embedded in newspapers, dating and expensive phone lines, you would not be far wrong.  But it is more than that.  As Bufe points out, it is part of the magical thinking which runs rife in the U.S. – especially through religion, over scientific issues, even in the treatment of history and politics.  Tens of thousands earn some kind of a living off of astrology, much like priests, imams, rabbis, swamis and preachers do from bilking believers.  39% of U.S. citizens believed astrology was ‘scientific’ in 2002.  Today that number is might be smaller due to the drop in religious thinking across the board. 

Orion - Shooting Down Bogus Ideas

Bufe lays out the ways that astrology is false:

     1.        It is based on the ‘principle of correspondences.’ This means Mars being ‘red’ relates to blood, war and iron.  Which might work in a Greek play or in a cultural analogy, but nowhere else.  Astrology is actually one big word association game.

      2.        Astrologers cannot explain how astrology works, though they think different ‘vibrations’ from different celestial bodies affect humans 'differently.'   Yet all matter and motion throughout the universe is similar, not different.

      3.        Uranus, Neptune & Pluto, which were discovered after astrology as a method started, are not used in calculations.  Nor are many other celestial bodies recently discovered.  Astrology is historically-based and missing planets!

4.        The supposed ‘vibrations’ from planets or stars would be far weaker than earth’s gravity, genetics, life in the womb, diet, environment or the arms of a midwife at birth.  What about their effect?

5.        Astrology does not take into account the inverse square law, a basic of physics.  It says distance plays a role in weakening the effect of light or gravity or what-have-you.  Yet for astrology the effects of a near planet like Mars or a constellation 100 million miles away are no different.

6.        Astrology ignores precession.  The Earth wobbles, which means since astrology started, and the Tetrabiblos was written two millennia ago, those who rely on it are now off by almost a full sign.  I.E. even the sky we see is changing.

7.        Natal astrology is based on the time of birth.  They claim a mother’s body shields a baby from astrological ‘radiation’ until birth.  However, it seems odd that the wood, concrete, iron and steel of modern buildings cannot stop this ‘radiation.’

8.        More liberal astrologers claim that celestial bodies only give ‘indications’ of astrological forces.  As Bufe puts it: “…taking such a position, astrologers are saying in effect that for unknown reasons the positions of some of the stars and planets are indications of the undetectable effects of unknown types of undetectable forces emanating from unknown, undetectable sources.”

9.        There is no empirical evidence of this ‘radiation’ or ‘vibration.’

10.   Scientists have repeatedly tested astrological theses on large groups of humans and no correlation has been discovered between birth date and personality or anything else. 

11.  Feelings are not a substitute for facts.  One scientist gave 150 believers of astrology exactly the same horoscope and 94% of them recognized themselves in it.  It was the horoscope of a mass murderer.  Hey, maybe they were all mass murderers!

12. The theory behind signs is that the Sun is backgrounded by a different animal constellation 12 times a year.  However, since constellations are not the same size, this is actually not true.  The sun takes 5 days to traverse Scorpio and 38 days to get through Taurus.

The Babylonians who invented astrology believed the sun rotated round the Earth; modern astrologers still use Earth-centered charts, as if Copernicus had never existed. Astrology fits as some kind of magical thinking back-up as religion fails.  It takes the natural interest in the universe, in the stars and planets, and turns it into a magic show.  Of course the universe IS magical in another sense – but not in that way.  Bufe puts it somewhat harshly, befitting a non-political pure atheist:  “It is simply based upon credulousness, ignorance, irrationality and the eagerness of human sheep to be led.”

Other reviews on this subject below, use blog search box, upper left:  “Rise of the Nones,” “God is Not Great,” “Libertarian Atheism versus Liberal Religionism,” “Female Genital Mutilation,” “Annihilation of Caste,” “Bright Sided,” “The Jesus Comics,” “The Dark Side of Christian History,” "The Left and Islamic Literalism," “The Da Vinci Code.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

The Cultural Marxist

August 13, 2019