• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Astrology as Negative Force

FreakBoy

Thinker
FreakBoy
Joined
Aug 14, 2001
Messages
176
I'm having a very fun debate with a believer friend of mine who has gotten hung up on one of the arguments brought up. I stated the Astrology and Horoscopes provide a negative effect on the world by the poor bastards who follow the tripe. He stated that the effect by those beliefs is so minimal as to be worthless for the debate.

Can anyone point me to any statistics on problems caused/money wasted, etc. in relation to Astrology and Horoscopes?
 
FreakBoy said:
I'm having a very fun debate with a believer friend of mine who has gotten hung up on one of the arguments brought up. I stated the Astrology and Horoscopes provide a negative effect on the world by the poor bastards who follow the tripe. He stated that the effect by those beliefs is so minimal as to be worthless for the debate.

Can anyone point me to any statistics on problems caused/money wasted, etc. in relation to Astrology and Horoscopes?
Click to expand...
Well the coach for the French international football team is a believer in astrology - apparently he left out at least one of their top players bacause of this.

Maybe that cost them dearly.

http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=ap-wcup-france-domenech&prov=ap&type=lgns
Bear in mind that, despite the tone of this piece, the French had a poor start to the World Cup and, when it comes to penalties (which is how it was decided) the slightest change can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Still they did get to the final so it must work better than Sven's tactics (the England coach) whose entire plan seemed to consist of picking bizzarre players then playing in a formation designed to have as little chance of scoring as possible.
 
Last edited:
"Didn't we once have a president in the sway of an astrologer?" Bronze Dog asked, knowingly.
 
BronzeDog said:
"Didn't we once have a president in the sway of an astrologer?" Bronze Dog asked, knowingly.
Click to expand...
That's not fair - he didn't just make decisions based on astrology.

I hear he also used a bowl of Jelly Babies and which colour people chose as an important policy strategy indicator.
 
Not the source I was looking for, but it will do for now.
from the article:
To Asiatic believers, the most dreaded year is the Fire Horse, which occurs once in 60 years. Because the Fire Horse is reputed to be so bad for the family of a child born in this year, many Asian women, statistics showed, resorted to abortion in 1966—a fire horse year—rather than have a child under that sign. (The next Fire Horse year is 2026).
Click to expand...
The source I was looking for gave some approximate numbers, but I don't trust my memory to try to reproduce them here.

Another one, this one a pdf.
excerpt from abstract:
The fire horse astrological sign occurs once every sixty years. Legend says that fire horse women have troubled marriages and cause their husbands early deaths. No such stigma applies to men. We exploit this natural experiment to measure the effects of girls’ value on abstinence, contraception, abortion, and infanticide. During the periods studied, sex selection could only occur through infanticide. In 1846, many fire horse girls were killed as infants.
Click to expand...
 
I was looking more for information regarding dollars spent, people in bankruptcy. Stuff that would show the level of impact this woo woo crap has.
 
I wonder which is the larger group: 1) those believers in astrology who also believe in physics, or 2) those who believe in physics who also believe in astrology? My guess is the former by a very large margin. Note: I'm talking about a perspective similar to conditional probabilities.

FreakBoy said:
I'm having a very fun debate with a believer friend of mine who has gotten hung up on one of the arguments brought up. I stated the Astrology and Horoscopes provide a negative effect on the world by the poor bastards who follow the tripe. He stated that the effect by those beliefs is so minimal as to be worthless for the debate.

Can anyone point me to any statistics on problems caused/money wasted, etc. in relation to Astrology and Horoscopes?
Click to expand...
 
Jackel said:
I wonder which is the larger group: 1) those believers in astrology who also believe in physics, or 2) those who believe in physics who also believe in astrology? My guess is the former by a very large margin. Note: I'm talking about a perspective similar to conditional probabilities.
Click to expand...

How can you "believe in" physics? Gravity and friction affect you either way. :confused:
 
FreakBoy said:
Fantastic, thank you! Any more?
Click to expand...
I have a tough time using the word "fantastic" to describe this, but ...

The citation I was looking for before is this one, through PubMed.Abstract:
Adecrease of about 463 000 live births occurred in Japan in 1966, constituting a sharp departure from the linear trend before and after. This was partly caused by contraception and partly by induced abortion. The induced abortion rate, 43.1 per 1000 births in the year (a total of 65 000), was significantly higher than the 30.6 expected (46.200 total) from the regression trend computed from the years 1963 to 1969. No epidemics were reported in 1966 which might have caused the increase in abortion. It is more likely to be due to observance of Hinoe-Uma (Elder Fire-Horse), which comes round every sixty years by zodiac almanac. This event represents a superstition observed only by the Japanese, in whcih it is a bad omen for female babies to be born in the year. 1966 was the most recent year of Hinoe-Uma.
Click to expand...
So, most of the decrease is through contraception, but tens of thousands were through induced abortion.

Whatever one's position is on abortion, I think it undeniable that this constitutes a substantial real effect of superstitious belief.
 
What is depressing is, if you type "costs of astrology" into a search engine, you get analysis of which astrological site gives you the best deal...dang. If you put "dangers of astrology" in, you get sites that tell you how astrology is very very very bad...because the bible says so.

I am certain there are data showing the hours of lost productivity based on astrology, but I suspect they are awfully hard to find.
 
Jackel said:
I wonder which is the larger group: 1) those believers in astrology who also believe in physics, or 2) those who believe in physics who also believe in astrology? My guess is the former by a very large margin. Note: I'm talking about a perspective similar to conditional probabilities.
Click to expand...
Seen my sig? The first line? Good.

So, why were you asking this question again?
 
Well, I was referring specifically to the question as posed. One cannot "not believe in physics" and have it not happen - physics happens, belief or not.

Unless...you misread "physics" and "psychics"? I do that too, being dyslexic!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom