Astrology is complete and utter crap. If you were to gather together all the poo produced by all the animals on this planet in the past year, you’d have a seriously big mountain of shit, but you’d still be nowhere compared to the sheer, galaxy sized mountain of shit that we call astrology. I am, quite frankly, shocked when people who can do anything other than dribble ask me what star sign I am. Seriously, in order to believe that a bunch of giant rocks and gas balls hundreds of millions of kilometres away are controlling your life, there’s only one prerequisite – breathtaking ignorance.

Why Astrology appears to work (but doesn’t)

Astrology appears to work for the same reasons that psychics appear to have magical powers and dickheads like Jon Edward appear to talk to dead relatives. The personal descriptions and predictions made are so vague and universally applicable that they are completely meaningless. All the meaning is supplied by the believer, who takes these vague, nonsensical statements and reads in huge amounts of specificity. People also have an ingrained tendency to make much ado about ‘hits’ and completely forget about the misses, of which there tend to be quite a lot. Astrologers, psychics, mediums etc all take advantage of people’s ignorance of how they themselves think and make connections between unrelated information. This can often be explained by ignorance of probability, critical thinking and science in general. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – our education systems are woefully inadequate when it comes to science and critical thinking. Kids tend to be taught what to think in school, but not how to think (which is vastly more important).

Some of the most obvious reasons why astrology is rubbish.

The constellations were arbitrarily designated.

The constellations were arbitrarily designated. Enough said? Any system that relies on the constellations is therefore meaningless. Astrologers assert that different effects will be had on your life depending on which planets are in which constellations – they’re wrong.

Astrological projections are absurdly inconsistent.

If the astrologers are following a set of rules that tell them what planets effect us and how, then why do they all make different predictions? The answer is that they just make it all up and throw in the odd ‘X planet in Y constellation’ bit for a laugh. It makes me laugh anyway. For example, the Sunday Herald Sun has two horoscope sections that are completely different, and very often contradictory.

The stars are really, really, really far away. Really.

Go outside and look at the stars. You don’t actually have to do it, you can just use your imagination (If you believe in astrology, however, actually do it because you probably don’t have one. I should probably also point out that you can only see the stars at night, and clouds can be a problem). You can only see about 1000 of the 400 billion odd stars in our galaxy with the naked eye. What you’re essentially looking at is a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional reality. When astrological superstitions took root in history, the stars were thought to be equidistant and very close to us. One theory was that the stars were the burning wheels of space chariots taking part in a nightly race across the sky. Very romantic, but very wrong. Then the stars were thought to be affixed to a celestial sphere not much further away than the moon. This was Ptolemy’s model of the universe with the Earth at its centre, and was successful for quite a long time due to the support of the clergy, who really get pissed off when people disagree with them. The theory was overturned when some guy (Copernicus) wrote a book saying that all this sun around the earth stuff was bullshit. Another bloke (Galileo) had a look up through some lenses and reckoned that Copernicus was spot on, so the church sent him to his room for the rest of his life. And people wonder why I despise religion.

We now know that stars are suns – giant balls of hydrogen which act as nuclear fusion power plants and are responsible for creating all the elements in your body (except hydrogen). Yep, every atom in your body was once inside a giant star that went supernova (cool, huh?). Some of these stars are closer to us (or larger) and thus appear brighter than others. The closest of stars, Proxima Centauri, is approximately 4 light years away (or about 40,000,000,000,000 kilometres away). Stars within constellations can be light years apart in terms of distance from us. The configurations that various stars appear to make in the sky only look that way because of our particular position in the galaxy.

Astrologers change things every time a new rock is discovered.

When a new object is discovered in the solar system by scientists, there is generally a fair bit of excitement amongst astrologers as to what effect this will have on horoscopes. But hang on a minute, does this mean all horoscopes given up until now were wrong as this new object has not been taken into account? The arbitrarily assigned names that these objects are given seems (astoundingly) to dictate what effect this will have on your personality and horoscopes. Here’s an example of some astrologers speculating as to the meaning of a newly discovered KBO/planet, given that it may be named Xena:

“But one conclusion may certainly be drawn right away. If the name Xena sticks, then this new planet will represent the female archetype of sacred warrior. Thus her house placement rather than sign placement will be the significant factor in determining Xena's meaning in a natal chart.”

The name given to an object, which could be drawn out of a hat, is important? Are these people really so fucking stupid that they fail to recognize the problem with that? For more information and examples of jaw dropping stupidity, go here: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/08/bob_in_the_seve.html

Either astrology works its magic by a force known to science……

Two options here: electromagnetism or gravity (the other two forces only work at subatomic scales). Apparently, the doctor who delivered you has a greater gravitational effect on you at the time of your birth than do the planets. Also, if gravity were a factor, the moon would completely overwhelm any effect from the planets – so that’s gravity out. Similarly, the sun would completely overwhelm any EM effect from the planets, so astrology can’t work by any force known to science.

….or a force unknown to science.

All known forces reduce with distance. Astrologers contend that distance and mass have little to do with their divinations. This means that planets that are far away (like Jupiter) can have an equal effect to those that are relatively close (like Mercury). They must disregard mass also, otherwise Jupiter would rule the roost. If distance is irrelevant, all the planets in the galaxy would (once again) completely overwhelm any effects from our insignificant little solar system. So, it can’t be a force unknown to science either. What could it be? Nothing, astrology is bullshit. For a full explanation of astrology and forces, go here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html

Two people born at the exact same time should exhibit the exact same personality.

Here’s a hint – they don’t. Astrology is bullshit.

Astrologers fail (badly) in every scientific experiment they have taken part in.

What is most amusing here is the confidence with which the astrologers enter into these tests. They actually believe that their absurd, superstitious nonsense will show up the close minded sceptics and evil scientists. Then, when they fail miserably, they complain bitterly about the tests that they helped design. Hilarious.

How can you test astrology? One example: Get astrologers to draw up a chart for several people based on accurate data of when they were born etc. Next, the subject gets a look at three charts, one being theirs. Surely, if the charts are such accurate descriptions of the subject’s personality, they should be able to pick which chart is theirs, right? Wrong. Whenever such tests are conducted, people cannot pick their chart more often than chance would dictate. Why? Because astrology is bullshit, that’s why. For a more comprehensive list of astrology related experiments, go here: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/02/what_do_you_mea.html

A fantastic demonstration of this in action can be found in this video, where skeptic extraordinaire James Randi entertains and enlightens a bunch of college kids: http://homepage.mac.com/onegoodmove/movies/randiastrology.html  

Conclusion:

ASTROLOGY IS BULLSHIT. Did I get that point across? If you just read this whole post (plus links) and still believe that astrology is real, kill yourself. If you’re not hanging at the end of a rope, read this hysterically funny story from a guy who compared some horoscopes with the reality of his week. Enjoy: http://rockstarramblings.blogspot.com/2005/06/why-astrology-is-useless-or-daily.html