Posted: Apr 11, 2010 4:46 am
Well, I put my oar in when my friend came over to visit. He's a practicing Astrologer who has just received his diploma in it.
I've known this guy for about 20 years, and we rarely discuss this kind of thing, and if we do, I don't tend to confront him over it.
While he was staying here, I showed him some Tim Minchin vids. When we got to the one about Storm, my friend became a little agitated, and finally asked me to stop the audio. So I asked him what was up, and he said that it was offensive. I asked him why it was offensive and he said because he's attacking my beliefs. First, we had a quick chat about the right to not be offended, then we had a chat about how beliefs are constructed.... then he finally turned to me and said: Let me put it this way - I have been actively practicing this for a number of year, you know how important this is in my life, so what do you think?
Heh... how to give your opinion on the utter pap without upsetting a close friend?
So I carefully laid out the problems as far as I could see them. The complete lack of mechanism offered by Astrologers for the claimed consequences of their belief system, the lack of self-check in the system (He is always going on about fake Astrologers), the lack of verification of claims made by Astrologers.
Getting into stride, I then went on a rant about how people throughout the ages have used these devices to con people out of money. How cold-reading may not even be conscious, but is certainly being employed. How people try to make meaning out of their lives, then cling desperately to that meaning without ever subjecting it to scrutiny.
It was a lose-lose situation though. Either I was going to just offend him more and upset our relationship, or he was going to accept what I said and have his 'worldview' undermined. It seemed like the latter, although this discussion branched off onto other topics, he seemed to have lost the combative dialogue he had tended to use in the past when claims against Astrology had been made in his presence. He seemed to accept that Astrology fit into pseudo-science as it had no testable mechanisms and in fact didn't even claim to know the mechanism, could not be falsified to the satisfaction of the practicioners, and agreed that the results of Astrological readings could be cold-reading.
As I said though, it was lose-lose, because he looked a bit stunned after the conversation, and I didn't feel good have divested him of some of the confidence in his beliefs. However, I didn't feel bad about my opinion as he did explicitly ask me what I thought, and I had never told him my take on it in the past - I mentioned this to him straight away to deflect the angry initial challenge. "Mate, how long have we known each other, and how long have I heard you making claims about Astrology? Have I ever criticised your beliefs? Then you should have the patience to listen to what I actually think and stow your offense away, because I could just as easily have been offended by you rattling off nonsense in my ear for the last 10 years".
One amusing line of discussion was that, the fundamental reason I challenged Astrology was the presumption that some bodies in space can affect, or signal affects on the birth time and place of a person. He told me I was typically wrong in my assessment of the mechanisms, and that Astrology doesn't claim that.... yet when asked to give the mechanisms, there was no response!
This is, I think, the angle to approach Astrology: how does it work? If we permit the assumption that there is some kind of power at play here, but Astrologers don't actually know how their system works, then they need to accept the fact that they could be wrong and making correlations that are not what is actually occurring. This is a great counter to "you're just close-minded", because they dig their own hole!
I've known this guy for about 20 years, and we rarely discuss this kind of thing, and if we do, I don't tend to confront him over it.
While he was staying here, I showed him some Tim Minchin vids. When we got to the one about Storm, my friend became a little agitated, and finally asked me to stop the audio. So I asked him what was up, and he said that it was offensive. I asked him why it was offensive and he said because he's attacking my beliefs. First, we had a quick chat about the right to not be offended, then we had a chat about how beliefs are constructed.... then he finally turned to me and said: Let me put it this way - I have been actively practicing this for a number of year, you know how important this is in my life, so what do you think?
Heh... how to give your opinion on the utter pap without upsetting a close friend?
So I carefully laid out the problems as far as I could see them. The complete lack of mechanism offered by Astrologers for the claimed consequences of their belief system, the lack of self-check in the system (He is always going on about fake Astrologers), the lack of verification of claims made by Astrologers.
Getting into stride, I then went on a rant about how people throughout the ages have used these devices to con people out of money. How cold-reading may not even be conscious, but is certainly being employed. How people try to make meaning out of their lives, then cling desperately to that meaning without ever subjecting it to scrutiny.
It was a lose-lose situation though. Either I was going to just offend him more and upset our relationship, or he was going to accept what I said and have his 'worldview' undermined. It seemed like the latter, although this discussion branched off onto other topics, he seemed to have lost the combative dialogue he had tended to use in the past when claims against Astrology had been made in his presence. He seemed to accept that Astrology fit into pseudo-science as it had no testable mechanisms and in fact didn't even claim to know the mechanism, could not be falsified to the satisfaction of the practicioners, and agreed that the results of Astrological readings could be cold-reading.
As I said though, it was lose-lose, because he looked a bit stunned after the conversation, and I didn't feel good have divested him of some of the confidence in his beliefs. However, I didn't feel bad about my opinion as he did explicitly ask me what I thought, and I had never told him my take on it in the past - I mentioned this to him straight away to deflect the angry initial challenge. "Mate, how long have we known each other, and how long have I heard you making claims about Astrology? Have I ever criticised your beliefs? Then you should have the patience to listen to what I actually think and stow your offense away, because I could just as easily have been offended by you rattling off nonsense in my ear for the last 10 years".
One amusing line of discussion was that, the fundamental reason I challenged Astrology was the presumption that some bodies in space can affect, or signal affects on the birth time and place of a person. He told me I was typically wrong in my assessment of the mechanisms, and that Astrology doesn't claim that.... yet when asked to give the mechanisms, there was no response!
This is, I think, the angle to approach Astrology: how does it work? If we permit the assumption that there is some kind of power at play here, but Astrologers don't actually know how their system works, then they need to accept the fact that they could be wrong and making correlations that are not what is actually occurring. This is a great counter to "you're just close-minded", because they dig their own hole!