Cathy:
You posted it in entertainment, and I was being entertained by it. Part of freedom is accepting that whilst some people will go 'Wow! How wonderful! That's interesting!' when they are subjected to someone else's idea of entertainment, others will examine it critically.
Don't worry, you can believe what the hell you like and my love for you as a fellow being won't diminish one iota as long as you do not harm or advocate harm to others.
Which is the rub, really.
First gay socialites don't really sit around and discuss Astrology as they are to busy living life and having fun.
I didn't mean that gay socialites discuss astrology, I meant it sounded like a gay socialite discussing parties. I happened to know a gay guy called Neptune (really bad name for an English gay guy considering how 'uranus' is considered an amusing word in itself in England), so this made sense to me if no one else.
Unlike yourself who attacked something that I thought would be interesting.
Look, if I said the Earth was being run by a secret organisation of reptiles, you might not feel it neccesary to comment about my credulity. Fine, that's YOUR freedom. It is MY freedom to comment on your post in the fashion I see fit. Outside of the Borg disagreement with someone does not mean you think they are a bad person. I disagree with you about astrology. I don't think you are a bad person. Don't defend yourself when you are not being attacked; defend the 'beliefs' that were criticised, if you so wish.
Age old superstitions, agree but just like everything else Astrology has made great strides in the past twenty years. You would know this if you didn't sit and make judgements on something you know nothing about.
Go on then. What are the great strides? Everyone having a PC to run Astrology programs on? Are you saying that Astrology is now a provable fact? I think not. As for 'know nothing about', hahahahaha. Sorry Cathy, I went through all the paranormal supersticious stuff looking for meaning after I got out of the Borg. Given time and inclination I could get out my books, and using reference tables and a calculator actually cast your horoscope. I wouldn't bother though, as I found it is the STYLE of presentation, the PHRASING of personality discriptors and the INCLINATION of the listener that determines whether a person thinks a horoscope fits them or not. Unless you are dealing with someones who knows (for example) that they have their moon in Cancer and what that means, you can read them a horoscope of someone else and get the same level of agreement on accuracy that you would with their 'real' horoscope.
I was not praying on people's lack of scientific knowledge.
Nope, but that's the effect. Asserting a close approach by Mars will cause severe weather is just not responsible; you might have the responsibility to deal with this information in a reasonable manner. But, 'weather' you like it or not, there are people who might actually be credulous enough to be worried by such a statement. I get equally annoyed when people post scare items about how condoms don't protect from HIV transmission, basing their claims on a survey into latex gloves, but probably not even having gone into the research far enough to discern that.
I do not use Astrology to plan my life. I use it to understand those around me and where they are coming from. I find that looking at a birthchart gives certain areas that a person is working toward in this life, unlike mundane astrology.
What you're finding is that a birthchart makes people sit and really about themselves, or about another. People are rarely challenged in the way that divinatory forms of folk-magic challenge them. Just the process is beneficial in interogating someone's values and attitudes towards themselves, their lives and others. And it may be more than just reflection.
They found out recently that acupuncture works... the centuries old mumbo-jumbo is STILL centuries old mumbo-jumbo, but putting a small current into the accupuncture points has a physiological effect (no needles needed). The mumbo-jumbo about chi, energy pathways, etc., was just a way of people building up a set of concepts to make this perfectly natural effect understandable and usable, and was influenced by the beliefs of those that developed it.
I think it is likely that whatever 'truth' there is in astrology, tarot, I-ching, palmistry, and other forms of divination, it is likely to be completely normal explicable phenomena surrounded in a shroud of mumbo jumbo.
Put it this way; I find it more likely that some people have remarkable perceptive abilities than a person's life actually being determinable by a star thousands of parsecs distant, a turn of a card, or a line in a palm. These 'remarkable perceptive abilities' need the focus of the mumbo jumbo to be effective at this time, but it is not the mumbo jumbo that makes them work. People who are into Wicca and such like will often agree that the 'spells' are just forms of focusing 'power', and that the words and ingredients are meaningless in themselves.
Unlike the Chinese doctor who through painstaking research and work showed that acupuncture wasn't some freak fringe therapy but a real and valuable technique, many adherents and practitioners of devinatory arts are content to wallow in the romantic mumbo-jumbo rather than seeing what real value there is in such things.
It's the same with other supposedly paranormal abilities, like healing; simple experimentation would determine whether this was real or not; 600 people with the same illness at about the same level of severity, 200 get no treatment, 200 get treated by an actor, 200 get treated by the 'real deal', each group of 200 is evenly distributed as regards belief or non-belief in healing. Simple simple simple; not been done.
We are all entitled to our opinions. They are like asses, we all have one, including you.
I don't have a donkey; I believe you mean 'asshole', but were being polite. Of course we are entitled to our opinions, you know perfectly well I don't believe otherwise. I have no obligation to respect others opinions though, and neither do you. I really don't think you're going to argue that I have to respect something I think is nonsense, because if you do, you'll have to do the same.
What are you a Sagittarius with a Leo rising and Aries Moon? A need to show your lack of knowledge by putting others down?
Oh come on! My freaking AGE is next to my post!!!!!!! Knowing what I do I know that even without a geographical locale you could determine my sun sign and moon sign unless I was bang on a cusp, and that the rising sign would be a guess between three, or is it four (about seven years sinse I looked at the books I have). The 1.2 second "huh?" that this caused until I realised you didn't have magic was most amusing though.
As far as putting the miles away from Mars I put it in miles as I live in the states. It interested you enough to look it up and for that congratulations are in order.
Oh, that was just me funning with Funky D... we sometimes do tag-team discussions with Creationists, but I think they've migrated south for the summer or something.
... but I look at the planets and ask why?
... eeeer, well, they probably formed out of a dust cloud left over from our Sun, under the influenece of gravity, so the simplest answer to 'why'? is "Gravity".
I try to find answers to this life no matter how hard the road has been. I don't negate others feelings because of my own lack of knowledge. I did not write this for such obnoxious, inconsiderate, unknowledgeable conjecture. I wrote it because I thought it was so awesome. Excuse me and I will make sure I don't write anything on this site that is not considered fluff.
I'm genuinely sorry I upset you. You can post what the hell you like, as you already know. However, if I posted that the dust patterns on a monitor were a reliable method of determining the personality of the PC's user, I would be quite prepared to deal with the reaction to it. If someone puts up a 'sex test' or 'personality test', I think most people are well aware these things are as unscientific as the Creation Book and are just for fun. Actually claiming that a conjunction creates adverse weather is halfway along the road to irresponsible; you might not agree with that opinion, but you don't have to, which is why not being a Witness is great.
Remeber what I said above; just 'cause I disagree with you doesn't mean I think you are bad. It means I disagree with you, period. I took me ages to realise that it is okay to disagree, and be disagreed with, and that you don't have to suffer in silenece when something you disagree with is happening.
All the best (with hair like that it's obvious I'm a Leo rising....)
