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Astrology is bunk - scientifically proven! Oh Really? 8/14/2009 4:11:24 AM
Astronomers cling onto a church-imposed taboo about considering astrology, thinking they are basing their prejudice on science. Had to laugh when I read this story on the BBC news page:
Star year chief tackles astrology
The UK director of the International Year of Astronomy is to give a talk on his debates with astrologers about their beliefs. Glasgow Science Centre-based Steve Owens, a former pupil at Culloden Academy, is returning to the Highlands to give the talk on Friday in Nairn. Highlands Astronomical Society (HAS) and Moray group Sigma are hosting the event. Year of Astronomy events are running throughout 2009.
HAS said until a few hundred years ago astrology and astronomy were often held in equal regard, with astronomers such as Galileo practicing astrology alongside their astronomy and mathematics.
However, the society said that advances in science had led astronomers to regard astrology as a pseudoscience.
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I don't know much about astrology but I'd like to know just what "advances in science" had any bearing upon astronomer’s beliefs about the subject? As I recall, it was the Church that banned scientists from practicing astrology or anything else deemed to be occult. They, understandably, wanted to establish their monopolistic grip upon all things spiritually oriented.
This ongoing dismissal of astrology does seem odd, in light of today's recognition that something as minor as a butterfly's wing flap can have a major effect upon a weather system thousands of miles and several months away. The moon lifts oceans. The Sun swings some very big balls around it. Is it not conceivable that these 'bigger-than-butterfly' phenomenon could have an effect upon something as sensitive as a developing fetus?
I struck up a great friendship with Jonathan Cainer this weekend at the Big Chill in Herefordshire, and he was most affected by the ideas expressed in my book, Sun of gOd, about the living nature of celestial bodies. As an astrologer, I should think he would be since it indicates that there is, indeed, more at play than just gravitational forces, and sheds some light on just what.
Postscript - I met up with Jonathan Cainer a month later at another festival, where he made this 2-min video endorsement for my book.
