Astrology, and consequently Horoscopes, when examined carefully, is plain nonsense. Anyhow, it can’t be denied that many people at this modern day and age are still fascinated with the idea that one’s fate is printed in the stars and accessible to anyone who would care to know.
One strength and weakness of horoscopes is its ambiguity. In its vagueness, it ensures that somehow, it will hit the right keys. In short, it relies on guesswork to predict a person’s fate. Anyone who has tried looking at their horoscopes surely has noticed that the vagueness of the predictions fits a lot of people regardless of whomever or whatever they are.
According to Phil Plait, an astronomer who is a fervent challenger of astrology, our uncanny behavior of remembering only when horoscopes are right and alluding to a near description that resembles the truth keeps the astrologers on their paychecks. Thus, those who experienced receiving an accurate prediction somehow retain only those times in their memories at the same time forgetting the frequency of having received a wrong prediction.
Until now, astrologists still aren’t able to give a satisfactory answer regarding the supposed similarity of fates of those people who are born under the same stars, a belief which has been further downed by Geoffrey Dean, a researcher in astrology, and Ivan Kelly, a professor on psychology, in their well documented 40 year experiment on people who have the same time of birth who were found to have lived different lives.
Astrology have been able to exist for such a long time because of its popularity such that it touches the lives of almost everyone and gives purpose to who are lost in their own mysterious future.
Attention Getter (Introduction): Astrology and Horoscope are complete rubbish.
Thesis: Astrology relies on ambiguity to deceive, rarely accurate and is not capable of predicting one’s fate.
Reason 1: The predictions of astrologists are too vague.
A. The vagueness of these predictions ensures that somehow, it will hit the right keys (Smith, 2004).
B. Many people found horoscopes accurate because the predictions are things that usually happen in our lives.
Reason 2: The number of times the prediction of an astrologer is inaccurate totally outweighs the times that these have been accurate.
A. Our uncanny behavior of remembering only when horoscopes are right and alluding to a near description that resembles the truth keeps the astrologers on their paychecks (Phil Plait, August 2005).
B. They rely on the behavior of most individuals to forget the inaccuracies of astrology and remember only the times when these have been correct.
Reason 3: If everyone’s destinies and way of life would be determined through horoscope, then people who were born at the same time should share the same fate in life (Dean and Kelly, 2003).
Conclusion: Astrology existed for years because of it envelops most of us who are fretful about our future.
Works Cited
Dean. G and Kelly IW. “Is Astrology relevant to Consciousness and Psi?” 2003. 4 February 2008. <http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Dean.pdf>
Newindpress.com. “Astrology is rubbish, says new research.” 17 August 2003. Express Network Private Ltd. 4 February 2008. <http://www.newindpress.com/news.asp?id=IE320030817100503>
Plait, Phil. “Bad Astronomy.” 26 April 2005. 4 February 2008. <http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html>
Smith, Amanda. “The Road To Delphi…” 24 April 2004. Radio National. 2007. <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/booktalk/stories/s1091403.htm>
