Fugato

“The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.”

— St. Augustine (354-430), De Genesi ad Litteram (“On the Literal Meaning of Genesis”), Book II, xviii, 37 [Note: in that time, mathematician = astrologer]

I decided I needed a whole new posting to respond to Baal’s comment on my last posting. He said:

I find your snooty science-elitist loathing for astrology intriguing. Partly because I once was a snooty science-elitist, but mostly because I am now a snooty anti-science-elitist (i.e. snooty anti-(science-elitist), not snooty (anti-science)-elitist).

Just as a sidenote … is it fair to say, then, that you are a snooty (anti-elitism)-elitist? :)

I therefore have a question for you (mind you, this is a trap):
Do you detest astrology in all forms, or only when people truly believe in it, letting it influence their lives?

Evidently my cunning plan of avoiding further discussion of this opinion by pre-emptively calling it snooty science-elitism has failed. Damn. But I can blame myself. I have written about it before; clearly I can’t quite leave this alone.

It is a valid question. Thank you for warning me that it is also a trap, but I’m going to ignore that; I’m okay with humoring you by walking right into your traps. (Phew, what a cheesy disclaimer.)

First, my choice of words, “detest with every fiber of my besserwisser being,” is obviously tongue-in-cheek. The spirit is right, but the degree is exaggerated. Plenty of fibers of my besserwisser being are allocated to things completely unrelated to astrology. In fact, I’d like to claim that the majority of these fibers are dedicated to things I like, rather than things I dislike. I hope so, anyway. So my feelings about astrology are more lukewarm than flaming.

As for my feelings about people earnestly believing in astrology: that I do not detest. I will not particularly respect them for that belief — but in no way does it prevent me from respecting them for all kinds of other things, or from respecting them on the whole.

Now, for astrology itself.

Obviously I do not detest the artifacts of astrology, i.e. the symbols of the zodiac, or the personality descriptions, or the terminology for Mars being in this house and Venus in the other, etc. These are by themselves neutral, inert, in the sense that they do not attempt to lead (and thus do not attempt to mis-lead) anyone in their thinking or their actions.

And I am not even particularly irked by the association between date-of-birth and personality type, in itself. Although I find it silly and invalid (see next paragraph below), it does provide a framework and a trigger for people to contemplate their personalities, who otherwise might do far less of it. And one can go “oh, I’m a Sagittarian to the bone” or “I’m quite atypical for a Sagittarian, probably because I have a rising Jupiter in the third house and was born in a period of heightened auroral activity at the exact minute when Halley’s comet passed behind the third ring of Saturn,” etc. … so even given my belief (yes, with all the conviction of a religious zealot, if that makes you happy :) ) in the complete invalidity of that association, I need not conclude that it will generally cause believers to completely mischaracterize and misunderstand themselves. And contemplating one’s personality in a sketchy but mostly harmless reference frame is bound to be better than not contemplating it at all.

Why do I find this association silly and invalid? Because of the Principle of Least Improbability, as I like to call it. One might propose all kinds of explanations for the existence of astrology, including the idea that it is real — that there exists a correlation between date-of-birth and personality, and that astrology arose simply as a characterization of that correlation, once people identified it. Fair enough, but I find another explanation far less improbable: that humans are (a) rather good at imagining things, (b) very good at finding patterns in what they experience — even when the patterns aren’t really there, and (c) exceedingly good at finding ways of making money off each other. There is probably more to both of these explanations, but I feel relatively secure in concluding that the believer’s explanation is not the least improbable one.

I begin to be bothered, though, when people start to say things like “oh, I like her a lot, but I’m a Sagittarian and she’s a Piscean and that will never work so we’d better cut this short right away” … i.e. when they short-circuit past all the valuable personality pondering and make a direct connection from star sign to life-determining decision. Obviously my example is contrived, but you get the idea; when you go taking things too literally, you are treading on thin ice.

I get even more bothered when people start bringing fate and prophesy into the picture, claiming that a person’s date-of-birth has some kind of prophetic value about the events of that person’s life. That can mislead people in making real, important decisions. Beliefs in fate and prophesy are (in my world-view) dangerous: they lead to shoddy decision-making, and make you vulnerable to … charlatans.

And that’s where I really start to fume out the nostrils: when I see “professional” prophesies and personality analyses being paid for and accepted as gospel. My sense of smell is generally weak, but the stench of charlatanism burns my nose, and while a mere enthusiast may easily be acting on good faith, a professional astrologer, shovelling out large quantities of detailed nonsense, must be intentionally dishonest. Taking advantage of people’s uncertainties, their weak moments in life, and their gullibility … sorry, you may say my judgment of the astrologer as evil (and his customer as gullible) is propped up against my own reference frame and my beliefs are not necessarily the whole truth and the only truth, and yada yada, but relativism must know its bounds; at some point I must stand by my conviction and call “bullshit!”

That is what I dislike about astrology, and about séances, and about snake-oil peddling in general: intentional, blatant deceit of vulnerable people for one’s own gain.

Of all the fibers of my being that aren’t being used for something positive, rather a large portion is involved in detesting that.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 4:19 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.