On the relative kookiness of astrology and mainstream religion

In light of blogger Jerome Armstrong's forays into the world of electoral astrology, Digby asks whether astrology really any nuttier than mainstream religion.

Trying to predict elections with astrology is on par with snake handling, faith healing, and the most bone-headedly literal beliefs about intercessionary prayer.

I question the strategic judgement of any consultant who thinks that astrology is a valuable predictive method.

It's the same worry I have about the judgement of our POTUS literally believes that he's on a mission from God, related to him in English sentences during regular heart-to-heart chats at the White House.

Religious belief isn't inherently crazy, and it's unfair to most religious people to equate their belief systems with those of snake-handlers, fortune-tellers, and people who use The Da Vinci Code to pick stocks.

At least most mainstream religious beliefs are carefully circumscribed to avoid giving believers the false impression that they have access to bankable magic information.

Comments

[cfrost]

No, religion isn’t inherently crazy, insofar as plenty of sane people are religious. Religion may not be inherently crazy, but it is inherently irrational, otherwise belief wouldn’t be required. Which is the part I don’t get. How do the faithful persuade themselves that a particular religion or creed or whatever is the right one if they know of the existence of others? There is a difference between serious academic, theological literature and bumper-sticker Jesus slogans. But what one might consider the serious, important, and necessary part of religion (like an earnest understanding of compassion, mercy, redemption, etc.) is invariably Siamese-twinned with goofy stuff like incense and funny hats. If it’s not, then it’s not called a religion. The faithful then conflate and confuse the nutty trappings with the message and things get, well, crazy.
The Society of Friends - the Quakers – try to avoid that trap, and in fact there are people that consider themselves atheist Quakers. (Swear to God!)
I’ve worked on boats with Portuguese fishermen, of whom some manage to blend traditional Catholicism seamlessly with the oddest atavistic superstitions you can imagine. It starts with never leaving port on a Friday and gets progressively stranger from there. The apogee, or nadir, of odd had to be the belief that getting a woman to piss on the net would bring good luck, i.e. fish. (Though having women on board at sea would, of course, be courting disaster.)
I still have to read Daniel Dennett’s new book on the subject of religion.
I’ve never understood the need for spirituality, mystery, cosmic-whatever. The ineffable to me is just that, and not worth bothering or thinking much about.

[SteveG]

The only one of the four operative forces in nature that would allow the positions of the stars to have an effect on a child in utero or at the moment of birth is gravitation. The strength of gravity is proportional to the mass (in this case massive mass) but it is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects (a galaxy far, far away) -- as such the distance factor causes the effect to drop off very quickly. So quickly that the gravitational effect of the stars and planets I completely swamped at the time of birth by the gravitational pull of the person delivering the baby who while much lighter than the stars is much closer. As such, your horoscope should not be based on the date of birth, but the weight class of the person who delivered you. A 110 pound midwife? Today is a good day for romance, make sure you shower. A 230 pound obstetrician? An excess of naval lint may harm job prospects.

[Jeffrey O]

As an atheist I have one word for this:

Amen

[Blar]

What about the force of love?

[Daryl McCullough]

I agree that astrology is complete crap, but I once heard a (possibly apocryphal) story about Galileo in the early days of the scientific method. Galileo was asked about the theory that the tides had something to do with the moon. He answered something along the lines of "It's time for people to get past the superstitious idea that heavenly bodies influence events here on Earth."

[vidkun]

You may have something there. Modern physics posits the existence of spooky actions at a distance, which can be compared to love. Which proves that I can also harness the forces of magnetism to make ferrous-metal hand tools stick to my ass.

[gorillagogo]

As a committed athiest, I must admit that I have a soft spot for studying others' belief systems, be they religion or myth or folk tales or the occult. Astrology is actually one of my favorites, even though the charlatans and newspaper horoscopes give it such a bad rap. But then I'm a math nerd, and anything which relies heavily on math --like astrology or it's cousin numerology -- I will find fascinating.

[db]

Religious belief isn't inherently crazy, and it's unfair to most religious people to equate their belief systems with those of snake-handlers, fortune-tellers,...

I'm sorry, but the basis for religious belief is just as vacuous and crazy as the basis for the belief in astrology. How are they any different?

At least most mainstream religious beliefs are carefully circumscribed to avoid giving believers the false impression that they have access to bankable magic information.

Most? That's too easy and vague. The Catholic Cuurch is a cult full of magic ritual, chants, prayer and miracles. The Mormon church is even worse. And God talks to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and George Bush. He tells them what to do and what will happen.

Sorry, this was not a strong effort. You can't have it both ways. The main difference between the two is that religion is pounded into us and is everywhere, astrology is not.

[Dicky Neely]

I like your new picture!

[Sundog]

Religious belief isn't inherently crazy? Excuse me?

Believing that the world was created and is being run by magical pixies in the sky is a sane viewpoint?

Believing that YOUR magic pixie is real and all the other magic pixies are phony - that's a rational point of view?

Running the world based on what we think the magical pixies in the sky might wish us to do isn't frothing insane?

I give up. Take me now, magical sky-pixie.

[Ron Sullivan]

Hey, now. Some-us like snakes.

[db]

p.s. I think you're wrong on the snake thing, too:

ote: The Holiness members who believe in 'snake handling' literally interpret the Biblical order of Jesus to 'take up serpents' (Mark 16:18) and Paul's experience of shaking off a viper 'fastened on his hand' (Acts 28:3)

One Sunday in 1910, in a small Tennessee church, George W. Hensley or "Little George," the founder of modern day snake handling, decided that since Pentecostals believe in exorcisms or the driving out of demons, speaking in tongues, and laying hands on the sick, why not believe in taking up serpents? (Olsen 24) So, he closed his sermon on that topic that Sunday by taking a large rattlesnake out of a box with his bare hands. He held it for a few minutes and then ordered the congregation to handle it or else they were "doomed to eternal hell" (Olsen 24). So, to avoid this dreadful punishment, the members would take turns coming to the front of the church to handle the snakes.

Hensley's fame for handling snakes spread throughout the Appalachian region and soon caught the attention of A. J. Tomlinson, the General Overseer of the Church of God. He ordained Hensley into the Church of God denomination (Olsen 24). For a decade, Hensley traveled around Appalachia preaching, handling snakes, and drinking poison (Olsen 25).

At first, most of the snakes were brought to the church by unbelievers looking for entertainment. At one early church service, a stranger threw a box full of cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, and copperheads onto the floor while Hensley was preaching. The congregation ran out of the building, but Hensley simply picked up the snakes and put them back into the box (Olsen 24).

In the beginning of the movement, people that were bitten were shunned. The person was considered to be "in sin" or lacking sufficient faith (Colson xiii). One of the most common reasons for being bitten was that the handler did not have the annointing--he was not being led by God to carry out his work or business (Holy Bible 1114). It was commonly believed--and in many places stil is--that snakes should be handled only when a believer is completely under the power of the Holy Spirit, an experience marked by speaking in tongues and physical frenzy (Lindsell 95).

By the 1940's the movement had captured both the attention of the national media and the local lawmakers, and the practice of snake handling was outlawed. However, Hensley and his followers continued to ignore man's law and obey God's law (Olsen 25). Because they continuously broke the law, they were repeatedly arrested for endangering the lives of others, but they were never severely punished under the law (Olsen 24). Hensley himself preached that lawmakers were being led by the devil to outlaw snake handling. "Now it's handlin' serpent that's again' the law, but after a while it'll be against the law to talk in tongues, and then they'll go after the Bible itself," he preached (Olsen 25). ...

http://www.english.vt.edu/~appalach/essaysS/snakes.htm

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Interesting info on the snake handling, but I'm not sure how it bears on my argument.

[Ginger Yellow]

I think snake handling should be legalised, on Darwin Award grounds.

[John]

PZ wrote an excellent post about this issue, with which I couldn't agree more. I don't care if Jerome is an astrology adherent, but letting astrology inform your decisions about political consulting is just whacked. I would place no more stock in a consulatant who claims that Jesus or Allah guides their decision-making processes in the area of political consultation. It already scares me that we have a President that believes Jesus told him to invade Iraq.

Sorry Jerome, but don't count on me to take you seriously when you write stuff like this.

[db]

I can't make out your argument. It seems to be that mainstream religions are better than astrology in some way. Not as whacky. Well, I'm sure the folks at the snake handling churches are every bit as devout and serious as those at your local Catholic church, and they share many common beliefs and texts. For you, one is whacky but the other is not and is deserving of respect.

Don't you see the problem with that argument?

You just feel more comfortable with the mainstreamers ... so long as it is your stream we are talking about. I see no distinction of any objective validity beyond that. One is more acceptable among educated folks because they are used to it, not because the doctrine is any different or any less whacky.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

My argument is that astrology is on par with the most extreme elements of organized religion. It's not kooky to say that there's a Higher Power or that there's a soul that survives bodily death. I don't happen to believe in either one, but I can't say that anyone who does is obviously crazy.

Let me put it this way, Deism strikes me as a perfectly reasonable belief system. I
don't actually agree with deists, but if they want to posit a Creative Intelligence that established the laws of the universe or a First Cause, or something like that, I see no obvious flaw in their supposition. The Deist God is impersonal and doesn't personally intervene with the laws of the universe to create miracles that would be subject to empirical observation.

Literal belief in miracles is always kooky, especially literal belief in modern-day miracles in real time. So, yes, it's extremely kooky to believe in the literal virigin birth, or the claim that God literally handed down the 10 Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. You can believe that morality comes from God without literally believing that Yaweh handed over physical tablets to Moses.

But most people don't take those stories literally. Or, if they do, they compartmentalize them so thoroughly that their day-to-day decision-making processes aren't strongly affected by them. It's one thing to have an abstract believe that God will provide, it's quite another to literally pray for rain and expect your prayers to change the climate.

Astrology is especially kooky because it effectively promises real-life miracles in real time, miracles for which there should be evidence, but there isn't. So, anyone who has an enduring belief in astrology is failing to exercise adequate critical thinking skills. I'm convinced that a totally critical thinker could exhaustively reflect on the Deist conception of god and not find any reason to reject that POV. Whereas, astrology is glaringly implausible and readily testable.

[DAS, Ph.D.]

Religion may not be inherently crazy, but it is inherently irrational - cfrost

OTOH, being 100% rational is inherently crazy. If you consider one of your typical definitions of a rational action (e.g. a Bayesian decision or whatever definition the economists are implicitly using) and then think of what kind of person acts like that, you have to say "that person's crazy". I know I'm venturing into odd territory I don't have the time to really wade into right now, but there must be good evolutionary reasons why we human-folk are not always very rational (and yes, I do subscribe to a weaker version of Dennett's thesis, although it predates him, that it's important to understand religion in evolutionary terms ... I disagree with him in that I don't feel any scientific rubric can fully explain away religious experience -- but perhaps that's 'cause I'm a scientist and hence aware of the limits of scientific explanations as well as a theist) and why we would identify a rational person as a bit eccentric if not full blown nucking futs. Of course, the converse is not true -- certainly there are many crazy people who are also irrational!

[DAS]

I think snake handling should be legalised, on Darwin Award grounds. - Ginger Yellow

But wouldn't it be cruel to the snakes?

[Julian Elson]

There are three ways in which people can hold screwed up beliefs that are relevant here, I think:

1) Holding an unfalsifiable belief.
2) Holding a falsifiable belief that is actually false, and which is known to be false through empirical testing.
3) Holding a falsifiable belief that is actually false, and which has thus far not been falsified.

I think that 3) is something almost all people do. We don't know which of our beliefs will turn out to be wrong, but we surely suspect that some of them will be. None of us would think that Newton was a loon for holding to the (false) theory of Galilean invariance, just because people like Lorentz and Einstein later proved that to be wrong. (although we might think Newton was a bit of a loon for other reasons, probably due to the huge amount of mercury he had in his brain by the end of his life)

I think that 1) and 2) are things that we'd rather avoid when we can. 1), we often bite the bullet and hold unfalsifiable beliefs. These are often normative, as in ethics. 2) we try to avoid whenever possible.

The question is, which is crazier, 1) when it isn't necessary (i.e., deism), or 2) (i.e., astrology).

[Stephen Uitti]

While newspaper horoscopes are useless, there are bits of astrology that aren't. A friend does readings, and ends up talking about your mid life issues, etc. That he starts with the position of Saturn is irrelevant. It turns out that you'd be about that age when you run into your next issue. Most people go through this. While i'd rather just have a counsilor that tells me what to expect, some people won't listen to a counsilor. These same people will often listen to lies to hear the truth. So, is that better or worse than religeon? Could be about the same, for the same resons.

[Count Zero]

I agree with what db said in his first part. If Judiasm and Christianity came about in the same way the Mormon Church did, or say Scientology, then why is one more believable than the other.
How will anyone be able to prove these aren't viable religions in say 1000 or 2000 years from now if we are around that long? That's the scary thing...is they require faith...and sadly in todays world I have faith in nothing. I'd like to think that somewhere out there, a universal Platonion mover is making things happen in some cosmic way, but could care less about what the microuniverse is doing.

[DAS]

A friend does readings, and ends up talking about your mid life issues, etc. That he starts with the position of Saturn is irrelevant. It turns out that you'd be about that age when you run into your next issue. Most people go through this. While i'd rather just have a counsilor that tells me what to expect, some people won't listen to a counsilor. - Stephen Uitti

I had a friend in undergrad who did Tarot card readings. For a lark, I let her do one for me. It turned into quite a useful counceling session for me. Afterwards I said to her "I don't really believe in any predictive powers of the Tarot cards, but it was amazing how you zeroed in on things on which I need counsel (and I am one who would go to a counselor and listen to that advice). It's like the cards were tool for getting information out of me, a gimmick, a way to break the ice and probe my issues in a sneaky and ultimately effective manner" -- her response was something to the effect of "I don't believe in it either -- a gimick is exactly what it is, and a damned effective one even if neither the reader nor the readee believe in any powers of the cards". Some have argued that rorshock tests are really a similar sort of device.

[DAS]

The question is, which is crazier, 1) when it isn't necessary (i.e., deism), or 2) (i.e., astrology). - Julian Elson

The problem is how do you know when a belief is necessary when it is of type #1? Or even type #2 for that matter -- there are many things which are falsified, but which are convenient or even necessary to assume because they are approximately true, e.g. Newtonian Mechanics. And I am sure Popper would have something to say about the requirement of type #1 beliefs to even have a constructive, scientific notion of what falsifiability even is.

Even if a type #1 or even type #2 or #3 belief is crazy, the actions that follow from it may still be of high expected utility and thus be rational (or may even be required to have a notion of expected utility and thus be at the root of rationality), cf. my earlier point ...

[Sundog]

OTOH, being 100% rational is inherently crazy.

Sorry, I quit reading right there...