What makes you believe?

Today at work a co-worker and I got on the subject of astrology. He is a super nerd when it comes to science so I asked him how did he feel about zodiac signs, he laughed and said thats fake science. I laughed but felt slightly silly for even believing at the moment. His reasoning was actually legit, when researching your sign the information is pretty much the same just in different variations with hardly no disagreements. If you are researching on the internet you'll notice a lot of websites have duplicate information as if they copied and pasted.

My question is what makes you believe with no facts? What drives majority of us to post questions on how to figure out others and use zodiac signs as a love guide? For me personally horoscopes and such started off as something I would read in the back of a magazine now it has evolved to why the hell does this person do the things they do haha maybe it is some type of obsession for the reason I believe

You're not going to be able to reason with a person about Astrology when they are steeped in the modern scientific understanding of the world. Modern science is basically materialistic to the extent that "meaning" and "purpose" are seen as something we project onto the world subjectively, through our consciousness. Its not actually *out there*. And in extreme forms of "Scientism", human consciousness and all its values (including morality and freedom of will) are seen as an illusion - a mere byproduct of brain chemistry. To assume meaning and purpose exist in the outer world, is seen as a kind of anthropomorphic projection. Metaphysical worldviews typically see meaning as an objective property of the universe, and see it as anthropocentric in the extreme to assume meaning only exists within the mind of man. For those who are of a strict scientific worldview, all that exists is material, and the causal relationships between material things. Since there is no complete causal scientific understanding of how the planetary bodies could affect our personalities, there are no "facts" to support astrology. But this misses the point as, with the exception of a minority who are trying to articulate astrology scientifically with insights from chaos theory or fractal geometry, most modern astrologers hold that Astrology is acausal. Its not that the planets influence us causally by means of some unknown force acting on us, but that the universe, imbued with inherent meaning and purpose as much as human experience of it is, is synchronized with us, and even represented/mirrored within us. Macrocosm/microcosm....As above, so below. For a really thorough treatment of these deeper worldview issues, a defense of acausal synchronicity, and the most thorough examination of the actual evidence for Astrology via an analysis of modern Western history in light of the transit of the planets and the archetypes they embody, see philospher/historian Richard Tarnas' _Cosmos and Psyche_.

And I think you concede too much to say you believe "without facts". The truth is probably the opposite. You, and most people who believe in astrology, were probably persuaded by very factual correspondeces between their sun sign (and eventually their chart), and their personality, strengths, weaknesses, etc. The fact that something is not "scientific" doesn't mean that it is not factual, or even empirical. Science itself is actually based on non-scientific philosophical assumptions.

well it's based on the energy from the stars and planets and the position they are in, they change, and we are born into a certain energy cycle. something like that. Plus if you really get to know people and keep tabs on their "astrological sign" you might be quite surprised with what you read on the internet and what you experience and learn in person. People who base astrology as garbage and fake, clearly only know of daily horoscopes. Waaayyy more to it than that. The way I see it is, I do not believe in God, BUT I believe in the universe and the people with in it. Our solar system, the galaxy, the universe, we are just people and all we have is people and who we are, if I can make sense of the stars and planets making us who we are, than that is better than believing in God. The universe is the God. No one created it. It just happens that we exist. We will never make sense of it either. Everyone has their own beliefs though. Like some people believed the world was gonna end numerous of times, did it happen? Most of those people faithfully believed in God. Many were just non believers but some how believed such thing would happen.

I dont' think Astrology really has anything to do with blind faith. I think people are really impressed by factual correspondences with their nature, the deeper they delve. Though we can decieve ourselves, we should be more famliar with our own behavior and inner psychological world than we are with anyone or anything else. For so many people throughout history to be that dooped into believing that they have a certain disposition and certain tendencies over and above others, would probably call into question the validity of any human endeavor to reason about the natural world.

I think critics of Astrology like the OP's "scientific" friend, though they espouse scientific values like experimentation, minimization of bias, and open-mindedness, probably have not even investigated Astrology beyond their Sun sign, are merely reciting a mindless rationalistic mantra they read on a "Freethinker" blog, and are more open to the charge of "blind faith" than anyone.

Posted by TaurusLovesScorpio
You're not going to be able to reason with a person about Astrology when they are steeped in the modern scientific understanding of the world. Modern science is basically materialistic to the extent that "meaning" and "purpose" are seen as something we project onto the world subjectively, through our consciousness. Its not actually *out there*. And in extreme forms of "Scientism", human consciousness and all its values (including morality and freedom of will) are seen as an illusion - a mere byproduct of brain chemistry??_.

Since there is no complete causal scientific understanding of how the planetary bodies could affect our personalities, there are no "facts" to support astrology. But this misses the point as, with the exception of a minority who are trying to articulate astrology scientifically with insights from chaos theory or fractal geometry, most modern astrologers hold that Astrology is acausal. Its not that the planets influence us causally by means of some unknown force acting on us, but that the universe, imbued with inherent meaning and purpose as much as human experience of it is, is synchronized with us, and even represented/mirrored within us. Macrocosm/microcosm....As above, so below. ...

And I think you concede too much to say you believe "without facts". The truth is probably the opposite. You, and most people who believe in astrology, were probably persuaded by very factual correspondeces between their sun sign (and eventually their chart), and their personality, strengths, weaknesses, etc. The fact that something is not "scientific" doesn't mean that it is not factual, or even empirical. Science itself is actually based on non-scientific philosophical assumptions.

So-- you've put some thought into this?

Damn, lol

You've made some great points. Impressive. 🙂

JenLove: Astrology is blind faith though no matter how you put it because it is just a system of believe and it's not scientifically proven therefore if you believe it you're just putting faith into something that is not proven to be factual, that is what blind faith is all about.

>>>Everything is ultimately a system of belief, but as to whether or not beliefs are "factual", I don't think beliefs have to be "proven" scientifically to be so. I could list a number of things that are taken to be factual, or considered foundational to factual things, but are not themselves even capable of scientific "proof" (e.g., truths of logic, the uniformity of nature, the reliability of induction, that our cognitive faculties even possess the ability to arrive at truth, etc.). We could also list beliefs we all take to be factual, but not scientifically proven. Most of our beliefs about our selves, ethics and values, and our relationships fall into this category. If you believe a partner to be "trustworthy" based on experience with them, this is not scientifically proven. You hold this belief based on their track record so its a type of emprical logical induction you're doing. It is not blind faith. Blind faith would be holding someone to be trustworthy without any history with them.

Another example would be your argument. You're basically stating that "a belief is blind faith if it is not scientifically proven". Is that proposition something arrived at via the scientific method? If not, then according to your argument, it has to be blind faith. If we attempted to use the scientific method to prove that the scientific method is the only method capable of delivering factual knowledge, it would be circular. The modern scientific method is a relatively recent methodology (it varies greatly from field to field, plus there's really no real consensus on what criteria even make something "properly" scientific). We had factual knowledge of the world long before it was even loosely articulated.

Posted by Tini
Today at work a co-worker and I got on the subject of astrology. He is a super nerd when it comes to science so I asked him how did he feel about zodiac signs, he laughed and said thats fake science. I laughed but felt slightly silly for even believing at the moment. His reasoning was actually legit, when researching your sign the information is pretty much the same just in different variations with hardly no disagreements. If you are researching on the internet you'll notice a lot of websites have duplicate information as if they copied and pasted.

My question is what makes you believe with no facts? What drives majority of us to post questions on how to figure out others and use zodiac signs as a love guide? For me personally horoscopes and such started off as something I would read in the back of a magazine now it has evolved to why the hell does this person do the things they do haha maybe it is some type of obsession for the reason I believe

speaking to scientific people is soo frustrating! i was speaking to a pisces (surprising) about religion, the supernatural and even astrology and he didnt believe any of it because he has this scientific way of thinking. must be a boring life with no imagination me thinks.

I have my reservations sometimes with astrology especially when i first found out about rising signs, moon signs etc. Its just too much and i think it makes things complicated..and i am just not there with the understanding. Speaking mostly from sun sign though, as a scrop i guess i just *feel* different sometimes, so when i read descriptions about us it just clicks with me. Then when i read descriptions of others I have met it seems to fit them as well. I do agree that a lot of signs have a mix of the same traits as others, but at the same time they have that difference. We are all still human and we all carry many of the same traits at the end of the day, some more than others.

i am also a firm believer of whatever you believe is true, will be true. & vice versa

JenLove,

I won't belabor the issue and agree to disagree, but just a few last thoughts I wanted to share.

-You mention the fact that beliefs in the trustworthiness of another are fallible. Right but fallible beleifs can be factual beliefs. You have a fallible belief that you're reading text on a computer screen right now, but it is at least broadly *possible* that you're dreaming, hallucinating, part of an elaborate experiment that involves your brain in a vat being manipulated by highly advanced alien neuroscientists, etc. Just because we have room for doubt, doesn't mean a belief is not factual because most of our beliefs are merely probabilistic. In fact, if your argument there says something against non-scientific beliefs, it says something equally against scientific ones. It is even considered intrinsic to the scientific method itself that we hold our theories tentatively. We must continually subject them to attempts to disprove them. This is actually a criterion of scientific method called Falsification that demands, that at least in principle, we must be able to concieve of a means by which a theory could be shown *not* to be true. Thus, all "properly scientific" beliefs are actuall fallible beliefs.

-The infallible beliefs we hold, beliefs we could not *possibly* doubt are actually the least scientific beliefs. As Descartes demonstrated, beliefs that we cannot doubt are beliefs about our own mental states. For instance, like the belief you have that you are percieving a computer screen right now, or a belief that you at least seem to be breathing, your heart seems to be beating, etc. You may doubt that those things are actually happening, but you cannot doubt the 2nd order belief that you are actually consciously believing them. But these inner conscious experiences are not accessible to science, because they are not physically and objectively observable by others, cannot be studied in a laboratory, etc. The things you are *most* sure of are very non-scientific beliefs.

Now if that last paragraph is communicated poorly, its the weed....Also Capricorns (which you are a whole lot of) are the skeptics of the zodiac....have the most trouble believing in things they cannot see....Make great scientists *because* of the skeptical nature and slow/careful deliberation. Isaac Newton is probably the greatest scientist who ever lived. He was a Cap...but most of his writings, many of which have never been published, were actually theological....

Everyone brings up some good points. overall If you believe its true then you are going to believe in it. I wish some werent so closed minded about it though