TimeCube: an idea so advanced that only an insane man (who’s really nice in person but comes across as unforgivably aggressive on the Internet) can understand it. How very Lovecraftian.

“I especially like this charming character attribute of the true believers:

They will agree that your basic “newspaper astrology” is probably just bunkum, but they explain this with the claim that newspaper astrology isn’t “real” astrology. They claim that skilled practitioners of “real” astrology can successfully chart somebody based on exact time and location of birth of that individual. Because, you know, adding more precision and variables makes it all sciencey. See?”

You didn’t do that on purpose, did you??

Actually it’s exactly akin to me telling the fundamentalist that there isn’t a shred of scientific evidence for his claims and that I won’t be holding my breath while he waves his arms about and explains all the spectacular coincidences in his sorry life that have convinced him that science just doesn’t get it.

It’s exactly like that.

When do you whip out the Galileo Gambit?

Let’s go with your analogy for a second, though.

You appear to be saying I’m denigrating the reality of astrology “despite all scientific evidence to the contrary”. Please present such scientific evidence. The burden of proof is on the astrologers, my friend. If all you have are fantasmagorical anecdotes, you have exactly zero scientific evidence. That’s all I’m saying.

Actually, I’m saying one more thing: All of your causal fallacies and coincidental correlations are working to delude you in the same way as homeopathy victims and numerology rubes, to name just a couple.

Should I also have my cards read by a “real” Taroh reader? Should I have my aura analyzed by a “real”, um, aura reader? I guess I should make sure to do some serious investigation with a “real” magnetic healing specialist. Not the fake ones just cashing in on gullible hopefulls.

But I can’t do any of that right at the moment because I have a Feng Shui master rearranging my furniture inside and a Shaman of some sort out in back yanking out my iceplant and arranging a homeopathy factory. He’s a “real” homeopath, though, and my wife says the Feng Shui master has some sort of a certificate that he faxed her last weekend.

Gotta go. The big tin-foil pyramid they’re installing over my house is ready to set down and I want to take pictures.

May the force be with you.

Yes gravity is an apparently weak force as you say, and the static charge in your sock can lift a small piece of paper against the gravitational force of the entire planet but physicists believe that is because gravity is diluted in our 4 dimensional space time, and is much stronger in other dimensions. Any talk of how these unseen dimensions play out in our mundane reality is obviously the place of mystics, dreamers and theoretical physicists, not for skeptics who can only believe in that which they can crush in their hands, as Plato would have put it. It is not my place to opine “how” the “unseen world” affects our everyday existence. Obviously astrologers sense a connection though.

No one truly understands quantum physics but they believed in it because it provides an accurate roadmap to what we observe in reality. Likewise we believe in astrology because we have found that it provides an accurate roadmap to what we observe in the darker waters of the human psyche. If I didn’t have my mind blown when I first had my chart read 10 years ago I would have chucked astrology on the burn heap along with hollow earth theory, Santa Clause and “winning hearts and minds through bombing and invasion” theory.

I thank you for your skepticism, a stance which serves to shed light on the patently false, but for you to tell us astrologers that what we have observed and discovered with astrology in our lives is wrong is akin to a Biblical fundamentalist telling you that the Earth is only 6,000 years old despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. We are stunned by your own ignorance on the subject of astrology, not awed by it.

DJ, for you to understand where we are coming from with our “subjective” evidence of astrology’s truth would require you to take a step in having your own chart read, by a real astrologer, not a one size fits all computer program. And perhaps picking up a few books on the subject yourself and learning to cast charts yourself of friends and loved ones and see how your own readings compare with what you know of those close to you.

I don’t expect that enemies of astrology will ever do so but for those who do I’m sure it would be an enlightening experience. Until then you will rave on like a fundamentalist on a tirade against Darwin, secure in your belief against a subject you refuse to acknowledge you are ignorant of. Again I wish you the best DJ, and really, the best way to have your head examined is to get a good astrology reading.

Because, as with any other quacks, astrology enthusiasts are fooled by anecdotal evidence and testimonials, as long as they confirm their preconceived ideas of mysterious unseen pseudoscientific forces acting on us “in ways science fails to observe.”

But for the astrologer to say something “works” if you study it and understand it, but that the same something appears to “not work” if you are a close-minded scientist demanding double-blind studies and repeatable experiments, is to ignore reality and hang on to fairy tales.

I especially like this charming character attribute of the true believers:

They will agree that your basic “newspaper astrology” is probably just bunkum, but they explain this with the claim that newspaper astrology isn’t “real” astrology. They claim that skilled practitioners of “real” astrology can successfully chart somebody based on exact time and location of birth of that individual. Because, you know, adding more precision and variables makes it all sciencey. See?

They present themselves as reasonable because they only believe in the supposedly valid well-informed version of their field, which only a close circle of experts really get. So they can discuss it from a position of authority on a forum such as this. They “know” their field in a far deeper way than those scared scared scientists.

They “know” their field well enough, in fact, to completely ignore any true scientific studies that show absolutely no correlation between someone’s daily fate and the positions of constellations and planets at the moment of their birth. Period.

“How can pesky scientists who have never bothered to ’study’ astrology deign to tell us that the laws of physics refute our claims!?! They must be scared of us!! Those scientists just refuse to see that there are completely invisible and undiscovered forces acting upon us, and that we astrologers have ways of observing the unobservable! One day all will become clear! Then they won’t be laughing at us!”

Homeopathy practitioners use precisely the same argument about their field. What, scientific studies that show absolutely no more efficacy than placebos? Pshaaah! We have Anecdotes! We have Testimonials! 19th-century causal fallacies! Confirmation Bias!! Beat that!

Intelligent Design “theorists”: ditto.

Accupuncturists “know” their field, and homeopathy practitioners “know” their field. Water diviners know their field.

Mystics, remote viewers, karma believers, pi water producers, magnetic healing bracelet salespeople, same thing.

See the pattern? C’mon, you’re trained astrologers, how can you not see the pattern? It’s what you do.

Oh, and one last thing: Planets and asteroids and stars and galaxies are unimaginably far away from us. All of the energy ever collected from the entire sky via our optical telescopes and radio telescopes etc – light, radiation, microwave, you name it, from the stars and bodies outside our own solar system – in the history of mankind, combined, to date, would equal the energy released by a single snowflake hitting the ground.

No matter where you are in the United States at this moment, you are more affected by the gravity of my own body than that of any planet or asteroid in space. The static electricity from me pulling on my socks this morning would have more physical affect on you than the magnetic or microwave radiation from any star in the sky. Follow me?

To say that the positions of any one item or group of items in the sky could have even the slightest effect on any humans on this planet is beyond absurd.

Even to only suggest that the sky is some sort of readable mapping of patterns or of correlations of “like” events and novelties, based specifically on the time and place that an individual exited his or her mothers’ womb, at a specific space-time moment, is equally absurd. What, there was no effect at conception? Only at emergence? Hmm.

I have to wonder: What is it in the lives of astrology freaks that causes them to so desperately seek order and meaning from such baseless correlation fantasies? Now, THAT would be a great study.

Sorry if I’ve insulted a whole lot of you astrology-reading, homeopathy-swallowing, accupuncture-loving, pi-water-drinking, anti-reality dreamers, but you need to have your heads examined. Honestly.

The artificial differentiation between what is primitive and what is not has retarded science for ages until certain women (Margaret Mead, Goodall and Fosse come to mind) overturned that and great strides were made in the understanding of what it means to be human.

In response to mongo, yes I wholly agree with you that it is fear of the unknown and control and power issues which have fueled the skeptics’ hatred and invective hurled at us astrologers all these years. I came to astrology on a lark, I thought it was silly but people I greatly respected swore by it. I have since fallen in love with astrology and love is just one more thing that science will never be able to quantify or explain rationally.

Skeptics feel that science is threatened by religious fundamentalism and rightfully so in my opinion. I only wish skeptics would limit their invective against the real threat, willfull ignorance, than waste time on a subject they refuse to understand,astrology, whose practitioners have ever enjoyed science and rejoiced in scientific discoveries along with the skeptics. Peaceout

There is a war of memes out there, and here for that matter. The information space is a battle ground where everyone and his brother is fighting for territory.

In this war, everyone is constantly bombarded with messages about how they should think, how they should interperete reality, and what is right, good and true. And everyone has an agenda it seems. No one is pushing the message that people should make up their own damn minds, and mind their own business and let people think as they wish.

So, people get stressed out and schizoid because their own judgments, feelings, thoughs and life experiences does not map cleanly to the dogmas that are out there.

Dont trust yourself, dont trust the others, trust us and only us because only we know the truth. Again and again. And no one is happy.