What Makes A God?

Although quite right about the british influence, it doesn't really dismisses what Chinacat said about those fields not being far away from eachother over there in India. Especially traditionally.

Also, european astronomy was already influenced by islamic astronomy in the first place So I reckon people in India too were not complete strangers to every aspect of 'european' astronomy before the british began occupying and influencing India.

 

Yeah i can post articles about current Astronomy and Astrology in India if I need to

 

Not in the first place, Arabic astronomy had already been influenced by Greek astronomy. And Indian astronomy as well. in fact if I remember right it was Arabic translations of Greek astronomy texts that first influenced the Indians.

 

Arabic astronomy was influenced by both greek and middle eastern astronomy. Arabic translations of greek astronomy did got a hold in medieval India but it was not the first influence. There was already a hellenistic (= greekish) influence in indian regions after Alexander the great which lasted for centuries.

By the way, ancient middle eastern astronomy could very well be influenced by ancient indian astronomy (and vice versa) as it is definitely sure those ancient civilisations (which are of course not that far apart from eachother after all) had connections with eachother! In short, it seems there has always been a certain interaction between these regions, its civilisations and their knowledge and cultures.

 

No doubt the spread of Buddhism influenced a lot.

 

Yes but such an experiment, to be truly given its due, would require a change in our attitude toward astrology. At the present it is the most pandering of forms. A good astrologer has hardly been given a chance to grow up in this environment. He has been told over and over again that his basic instincts are wrong. His ability to grasp connections where others pay no mind has been called a shortcoming, if not a mental retardation.

So I'm not sure how we proceed with an experiment on astrology, because it assumes that a really gifted astrologer exists.

 

This is the exact same argument as the leprechaun argument, lumping all things that haven't been proven into the same boat. You're saying that which is unfalsifiable is essentially useless, but that itself isn't as falsifiable statement. There could be things that aren't falsifiable that are more fruitful than other things that are not falsifiable. How do we pick and choose? Perhaps perfectly naturally, without much choice in the matter other than to do what seems right to us.

Well now you're talking. Define the present moment, though. Is it defined by your subjectivity or its objectivity? Subjectivity does seem different from objectivity, but we are faced with a reality that cannot lie. Only we can lie.

So it seems we live simultaneously in two different worlds. Two things which seem abstract from each other. How does psychology relate to physics?

How they are navigating the ship also depends upon what it means to be a man, which revolves around our identity in the cosmos. What does it mean to be a man? Is it something profound? I think everyone wants to think this is profound. It seems profound. But is the power to make it profound something innately human? Or do we draw from a deeper, more soulful well?

 

Well if you applied a little critical though to the experiment /study you propose and the criteria I put forth, you would realize that such an experiment is nigh unto impossible and it hasn't anything to do with astrology at all.
How are you going to actually control every conceivable variable that could effect "better offness".

your assertion it can't be done for the reasons you cite is silly. Science often looks into fringe topics with all the seriousness and neutrality afforded other research.

 

There is no standard metric for better off. "However we can chart elements of behavior over time to establish a data base for statistical assessment. It is no problem for science to say that a systemic combination accounts for the appearance of the subjective state and yet it accounts for no specific apprehension. What is good for the prized goose is also good for the the less than proportionally valued gander. Perhaps we might pick up on this had we been less critical and more respectfully mindful

 

Whatever you think of my critical and disrespectful demeanor has nothing to do with the fact that such a study would pretty much be impossible to arrive at the conclusion that astrology made these subjects "better off" because there is no standard metric for "better off" and due to the general nature of "better off" any conclusions drawn would still be very highly questionable as to the actual cause and effect of astrology in their lives.

Because the hard core astrology that is being spoken of here that claims to be able to predict specifics details concerning a person based on their reading, then we need to set the bar much higher and specifically name, define and test for these details. The complaint concerning the study already cited was that it wasn't specific enough and just did basic charts or whatever.

The more bold the claims, the more exacting the criteria needs to be.
I'm sorry but pulling a metric of "better off" out of thin air isn't gonna cut it when you are talking about specific details that these charts are supposed to produce/reveal.

 

I don't see what's silly about the reasons I cite. You think the quality of the astrologer has nothing to do with a study on astrology? Certainly there are poor mathematicians as well. Should I conduct a survey of mathematics based on interviews with insane mathematicians? Science hasn't even begun to give astrology the respect it deserves. Science just stumbles around blind in a darkened room repeating, "Science! Yes, science!" as though it has found the real solution to the complexity of the human experience. Really it ignores the human experience because it isn't scientific. Which is good; it isn't. But the human experience is every bit as real. If there was such a study that reported that those who visited astrologers had a greater sense of well-being, or perhaps reported feeling more fortunate than others, this would at the least be an interesting tidbit of information. But I, of course, am saying the study is impossible, because we can't grant astrologers their due respect in the first place, because we're all much too busy being "realistic" (whatever that means.)

 

that's just a bullshit cop-out.
The previously cited study negates what you are claiming as it did give astrology and astrologers their due respect by going to THEM and having THEM help construct the study and THEY (the astrologers) picked the astrologers that would participate.
WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT OR EXPECT?

 

Oh, perhaps you were misunderstanding me. I want them to be treated how you might treat Dumbledore, with that kind of respect. So what I've been trying to say is that obviously that is never going to happen. It has to happen, though, if one ever wants to understand astrology at its best. But we're already operating under the assumption that no deep, mystical union between man and the cosmos exists. These studies on astrology have no more substance than the horoscopes in the daily paper.

 

Allowing an astrology committee to choose who they deem as the best of the best of the astrologers for a study is not showing respect? If that's what you are suggesting, that's ridiculous.

Including the biases of the astrology community, which seems to be your rallying call is not the place of science, good science anyways.

 

I didn't offer that i regarded your demeanor as disrespectful. I said nothing of any critical behavior. It doesn't appear that you picked up accurately what I said perhaps because you developed a little irritation that you were nursing a response to at the same time you read on or in composing your response. I am talking about critical examination. What i posited there was the critical error in the language. We can't even begin our expose using those terms because better is a qualification. My point is the horse is dead before it got out of the gate and we don't need to consider or unravel the argument that is built on that language. We can edit in broad strokes quickly using the method of discarding any qualifying elements and get to the stuff that may actually have promise. as I said you can't measure subjective qualifications except to express them. We can measure observable activity. He gets up here, he does the next thing here and on until we have a substantial enough data base to begin some comparative analysis. I also pointed out how this is present on both sides as far as the influential or causative.

I was also with the goose gander comparison showing where in science there is an unexamined assumption that we took off from. We haven't taken off examining the esoteric questions of astrology yet because we are still sorting out what is useful for scientific purposes of verification. The unexamined assumption that is already embedded in the scientific examination is that physical systemic reactions account for all the manifested activities of our biological machine. Including making the abstract leap from inanimate to animate. It is this initial premise that makes astrology appear suspicious to the point that there is no enthusiasm to take it up. The astrology speakers are used to their subjective machinations as there was no critical examination to cause them to develop a more tangible vernacular as there were only seekers and no critical inquiries. So they are late coming in knowing how to transpose the suggestive language of their practice into today's tangible descriptors. By the time we get to making quantitative investigations the quantitative measuring was focused on the ready low hanging fruit and there were/are still a lot of fruits in the world to be cataloged. If it does happen that there is more serious interest in the subject I think we need a crossover form both sides. The astrologer needs to learn to communicate to with the science community and the scientist needs to learn how to translate from his vernacular to theirs. To completely access this congruence takes bilingual investigators. The reason the phenomenological apprehension process or discovering esoteric aspects through self examination was neglected in the main from that point is the economic power of learning to manipulate materials. The cash cow yielded more immediately than the cow goddess. in the process our steady sequential full spectrum development was turned to special spectrum concentration and this one sided rush left out the things that could address the unexpected consequences that develop as they appear. The excited rush of new discovery outpaced the wisdom that would normally develop in concert if our attention hadn't been drunk on exponentially compounding riches.

 

thank you for expounding on your post.
you are saying essentially the same thing as I did; a study of the nature neonspectral proposed is doomed from the outset and that has nothing to do with how astrologers are viewed by the scientific community.

 

WTF???
so now I and others and the scientific community should treat astrologers as if they were a fictitious character in fantasy story...


Seriously???
You do know and understand that the Harry Potter stories are fantasy fiction and are not a biography or something, don't you?

you apparently have absolutely no idea what the scientific method is.

 

It is the language that composes the questions and the language that expresses the answers. Numerical calculations are translated into linguistic descriptors. The language we use every day is full of qualifiers falsely serving as axiomatic starting points and I have noticed when you stop using these qualifying fundamentals the world around you starts to become clearer, less prone to the attendance of qualifying the admirable. So much of my mind was tied up in figuring out my thinking that when I payed attention to the world around me there was a lot of information that appeared brand new to me because my attention had been distracted managing my illusions to fit. The clean language itself is enormously revealing and is why i focus attention on it. It changed the way i apprehend the world. From what I can see this is how we understood each other before Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” Our common language from then is the language of creative construction. it's back. Well it's always been here but it couldn't be discerned because of personal qualifiers. Do you know what a person looks like without the distorting characterizations? the picture of innocence.

 

Yeah I know, no problem. I was doubling up the point so it could be shown as a systemic feature that we can use to hasten our serious considerations and more easily let go of our highly developed defenses of our own rhetorical premises. you can't long seriously contend if you are looking at quanta that plainly states the case in common terms. there is no opposition and the process goes from one of contentions to connections.

 

i want to remind. I speak to the whole community when i speak to any individual and the only object is the information. I don't have any personal bones to pick. The failing of our rhetorical tool in this language, english, is the pronoun. They can be both personal and transpersonal. I use the transpersonal when describing our common estate. I use the personal when speaking directly to the person regarding their personal expressions. Of course there are times when we don't pay close enough attention for many reasons including fatigue or flagging interest in subject matter to the context to distinguish readily the difference. In those instances misunderstandings commonly occur.