Astrology & Hinduism

The best part of Hinduism is that you can be a good atheist and remain a good HIndu.

Maybe Hindus should start using this great liberal tradition of their religion to weed out fools who promote astrology as a face of Hinduism.

Astrology is dumb and an idiot's paradise; or the astrologers easy way to make mnoney.

Now Hinduism is a great religion which is capable of flexibility and change. Being a HIndu I have nothing to do with astrology, except as a means of amusement. Maybe all Hindus should outgrow astrology now since it only promotes superstition.

Anyway chaplain you would be doing your religion and yourself a favour by taking your followers away from astrologers and other idiots...:)

There is a lot Hinduism has to offer the world. Yoga, meditation, genuine secularism and an ability to absorb good from all other relgions; Hinduism also has a rich tradition of relgious texts and folklore. Hinduism also has the ability to reject and outgrow, whatever is dumb and unscientific. It's about time, HIndus start rejecting astrology as a science and instead concentrate on astronomy of which they have a rich history....

And our dear chaplain should start offering this great liberalism of HInduism to the world.

I wonder whether Rajan Zed would comment on the Ganesh milk drinking events which first occured in 1995 and spread to Hindu temples around the world?

You're making assumptions, there, JYhume, that it *matters* whether or not constellations are real things, or if they 'care about you.'

Western astrology, as I said, doesn't even use the current positions of the fixed stars, as I said, ...it's an all-too-common straw man argument that 'Astrologers are dumb, they think the stars exert some hidden force on us,' ...that's a mischaracterization of what it actually *is for.*

Characterizing it as a 'science' is of course problematic, ...certainly in the case of Vedic astrology, it *does* include astronomy, if of a basic kind. I like to characterize it as a framework for psychology that came from people having the vital function of knowing when to plant crops and such, ...who happened to be in proximity to kings and others with a certain amount of time on their hands.

The 'debunker' generally doesn't ask the right questions: statistical analyses of newspaper horoscopes don't really tell you much: they tend to be more interested in proving 'This is superstition' than finding out what they're talking about. Not to make any *particular* claims, but I've found it a pretty interesting field of study that is a lot more complex than certain types make it out to be, before mowing down fields of straw-men.

Frankly, lumping it in with the 'supernatural' is a characterization I question. The stars are, to us, like a big *clock,* and many cultures have a body of anecdotal observations about how people act when the 'hands' show certain things. To say the stars 'make' things happen is either a metaphor or, charlatanry, really. It's just a form.

"Whether this gives better results is highly-debateable..."

Astrology isn't debatable, it's testable. And it's bunk.

"Constellations" are classic examples of reading into nature what we wish were true. They are not real entities. Like reading cloud formations, is it a rabbit? Or a cellphone?! It's just water.

Constellations don't care about you. They're just stars, doing what stars do.

"Please be honest. Astrology does not "include" astronomy by any modern definition of the words."

Actually, Vedic astrology very much does involve the current positions of the planets in relation to those of the fixed stars. The more familiar Western type is charted with corrections according to how the stars were at one point long ago, when the constellations were named, but that's pretty esoteric. Whether this gives better results is highly-debateable, of course, but they arrange things quite differently in the first place.

"You'll never find a scientific study of, say, the cosmic microwave background focusing on its influence on human destinies."

Considering that's a constant, one might consider it baseline, no matter how supernatural you wanted to take it. Perhaps it's the sound that made the universe....

Ommmm :)

Please be honest. Astrology does not "include" astronomy by any modern definition of the words. You'll never find a scientific study of, say, the cosmic microwave background focusing on its influence on human destinies.

One way of identifying crackpot beliefs is by noting the non-crackpot ideas that believers try to associate with to help make their nonsense seem more respectable. You might fool yourself, but you ain't foolin' me.