debate-points, astrologyI often find myself debating a lot with friends who are firm believers in astrology. I am a skeptic in all kinds of supernatural phenomena, including astrology, so I try to refute their claims to the best of my ability but I can never seem to get through them.
The precise point I want to refute is that celestials bodies influence people’s behaviour. However, when I argue that there is no evidence of this, the conversation often turns into an anti-science discussion (science cannot explain everything, some things are best explained without science, scientific evidence is irrelevant to astrology, and not having evidence doesn’t prove that astrology is wrong).
Does anyone know around that problem?
Doesn’t the vagueness of a horoscope play some factor in determining its irrelevance? I have yet to see a horoscope predict, for example, what will be available to me for lunch on a given day, or identities of the people who will contact me on a given day. (and those are benign predictions!)
Furthermore, you could challenge the person to read the horoscopes for all twelve of the zodiac signs at the end of the day and honestly assess which one(s) of them had any degree of accuracy in terms of how their day went. If they’re even remotely honest, the likelihood of their own sign being the only one that’s “right” is very slim. (it could be any of them, more than one, or none of them) With accuracy rates like that – even with the associated vagueness – how can this be attributed to anything resembling real predictions? And that’s not even getting into the fact that horoscopes make the same predictions for hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
It depends upon whether you’re trying to
Argue that Astrology is meaningful/relevant for divining future events, or
People can be influenced “by their stars”
For the former, the question comes to: can astrology predict the future?
The latter concerns the present. Do external things (positions of suns that are many light years away) have any effect on the actions of a given person?
Then you get into “free-will” versus “predestination” and the like, which you can easily destroy.
I find its always good to work within the person's framework to point out its inconsistency if it is at all possible.
In this case, you could point out that people's signs recently "changed" to include the addition of a 13th sign.
Then they have to deal with the issue that up until recently they were believing in predictions about people's lives that were being falsely attributed since they all had incorrect signs.
Then you can say that if they think the predictions were still valid before, they must admit that the predictions that are given for any sign are essentially equally able to apply to any person, in which case the predictions are meaningless since they do not uniquely predict anything for anyone. If the predictions are meaningless then this undermines the central premise that there are useful inferences that can be made knowing about "one's stars".
If instead they think that the previous predictions were actually invalid the entire time, you can point out that there justification for their belief did not change between then and now, and therefore whatever justified their belief before hand is equally valid now, but that their belief has changed. Thus whatever justification they could hold on to has now invalidated itself, rendering their belief structure explicitly contradictory while not asking them to believe anything that they have not already believed.
Either way, without needing to exit the assumptions made by believers in astrology, the believer in question in order to be consistent would either have to give up the idea that their belief system is predictive or that it is valid. Both these things obliterates the usefulness in their belief.
Normally I’d go with the simple assertion that they bear the burden of proof, as they are the ones making the claim.
However, just lately they’ve come out and said that everyones sign is actually one month over, so whatever sign you thought you were all these years with its attendant personality elements, was actually off by a month. If this kind of absurd re-think isn’t enough to make them see the silliness of the whole astrology system, you probably won’t convince them no matter how much reason and logic you bring to bear.
Start by asking the question. “How?” As in, how do the planets influence people? When they answer, no matter what the answer, it’s going to come down to one of two ‘real’ responses. The first is “I don’t know.” and the other option is some version of “It’s magic.”
In the case of “I don’t know”, you can ask why they believe it, what their source of believing it is.
In the case of “It’s magic” (of whatever version they answer that), you can then ask if there are any other things they believe in, like fairies, or voodoo, or ghosts, or Santa. If you ask enough, they’ll refuse to believe in something, and you can ask why they believe in astrology but not Santa, after all, there’s a lot more evidence for the existence of Santa than for astrology.
Finally, in both cases you can move onto the topic of coincidence and correlation versus causality. Give them the example of the way ‘spirit mediums’ use generalized assertions that most people share in. For example, “You are concerned for your family.” … well duh, everyone has concerns for their family. The assertion. “Since Ares is in the third lunar house, and Gemini is rising… you can expect a surprise financial windfall”.
Think about that. Now you’re out looking for a financial windfall. Thus you find $0.50 in the couch cushions or you win $5 in the lottery. How unlikely are these events? They’re not unlikely. In fact, they are incredibly likely.
That’s the approach I take.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.