Ok, moving up to Astrology 102

[Beerina]

About 15 years ago, while in college (working in a factory during the summer) some guy was yakking about astrology. I quickly pointed out how the person next to you has more gravitational effect on you than Mars does.

Without missing a beat, he said, "How can you talk about astrology when you don't know what it purports to represent. Astrology isn't about gravitational effects. It's like a clock, which measures time. A clock doesn't control time, just measures it. So, too, the stars and planets don't control your destiny directly, they just measure it."

I was stunned and didn't know how to immediately reply. In the intervening 15 years, I haven't seen any (skeptic) astrology articles ever reference this notion. But I would like to point out that as long as people keep harping solely on the gravity, they won't completely knock it out from the minds of True Believers.

[iain]

Well, nothing is going to dissuade the true believers.

I guess the obvious question would be why time might have this effect. If all way are saying is "people born 15 billion years and 1 month after the creation of the universe are caring and introspective, people born 15 billion years and 2 months after the creation are outgoing party animals", what is it that causes it to be that way?

Of course, the answer would probably be that it just does and we can't hope to understand these mysteries fully, but then it just goes to show that some people will believe anything :(

[CFLarsen]

In my experience, astrologers have largely dropped the causal physical explanations, and are now focusing on psychoanalysis, and Jung's synchronocity in particularly. Of course, any astrologer will throw in whatever mumbo-jumbo he/her also believes in. I've seen Tarot-astrology, crystal-astrology, aura-astrology, healer-astrology, palmistry-astrology, numerology-astrology...you name it, they believe in it.

The interesting thing is, I very rarely see an astrologer speak out against even the most ridiculous belief, when paired with astrology.

They all still claim that astrology works, though...

[RichardR]

Just shows you should debunk what people claim, not what you thing they're claiming.

Astrology is easy to debunk. Just ask him (1) how all these details were figured out in the first place (ie what experiments were performed to show all the highly detailed predictions they make – hint: there aren't any) and (2) ask him why it always fails when tested: http://www.skepsis.no/english/subject/astrology/studies.html

Of course, you will be wasting your time. Faith in astrology is impervious to any and all contradictory evidence.