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40 Days and 40 Nights in the Wilderness with Venus
Venus, the planet, goes retrograde (backwards) less frequently than Mercury, about every 18 months, and lasts 40 days. Because it is less frequent, it is more difficult to understand and wreaks more havoc than a Mercury retrograde. Mercury affects...
Annual Forecasts & Fengshui Remedies for Since 2009 : Year of Yang Red Fire Dog - for Dog Sign
ANNUAL FORECASTS & FENGSHUI REMEDIES FOR Since 2009 : YEAR OF YANG
RED FIRE DOG - FOR DOG SIGN
The ancient Chinese Astrology is not only fascinating but also
quite accurate. It's Zodiac is based on 12 signs, a cycle of 12
years and are named...
Astrology Signs Out of Sync
If you analyze the astrology signs as attitudes you will possess a major tool for understanding human nature and all your intimate relationships. This will be especially helpful for understanding those people who have signs out of sync.
...
Finding Your Inner Flame: Finding Passion Series - 3 of 3
Why is it that some goals have a fire and a passion behind them that creates an almost self-propelled drive towards completion, while other goals are left dead in the water before they've hardly even begun? What causes that level of motivation...
Gramalkin.com - Sidereal Astrologer, Tarot Reader and Sidereal Astrology - Sun in Virgo Jupiter Lunar Mansion
Dateline GMT 0 London 9/13/2oo5 (adjust to your time zone).
www.gramalkin.com - As the Transiting Sun Begins its Passage Through the Jupiter Lunar Mansion of the Mutable Cross Constellation Virgo September 17 - 26 the Only Aspect it will make is...
Tarot Decks Come in Three Flavors
Interested in learning how to read Tarot cards? If so, one of your first decisions will be "What style of deck should I use". Although there are now hundreds of brands of Tarot decks, most fall into one of three general styles -- Marseilles,...
The Beginning of the End?
does America's war with Iraq mean the beginning of global tyranny?
I am a deeply religious Christian, and I absorb information and news like a vacuum cleaner and read my Bible every day. When the twin towers of the World Trade Center were...
The Planet, Saturn, Is Your Teacher
To understand how Saturn is your teacher, we need to look at the
twelve houses of astrology.
Each house in astrology represents an area of your life: first
house, for personality, second house for personal finances,
third house for...
The Sound of His Laughter
When you're searching for your Mr. Right, I want you to pay close attention to his laugh. It may seem odd for me to say that, but you can tell a lot about a man by his laugh. Real laughter is uncontrollable. For just a moment something...
What the Matter Is
When my oldest boy was really young, he tickled my mother with that phrase. I would ask him, "What's the matter?" and he would answer me, "Well, what the matter is..." followed by whatever it was that he needed to discuss with me. He would say...
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They Should Have Seen It Coming
A comedian once showed a newspaper to his audience. The headline read, "1-800 Astrology Business Goes Under: They Should Have Seen It Coming." Everyone laughed, including me. We chuckled at the irony of a real contradiction here. If such a business could provide the service they claim, then its owners should have succeeded where other businesses failed. In fact, if they really knew the future, they likely wouldn't bother with this business at all. They would simply raid the stock market with a perfect investing record. We all somewhat instinctively know this, even those of us who have never had the occasion to sit and think it through carefully.
But this pseudo-science has another problem that concerns us. It's adherents who create the garden-variety horoscope columns (found in most any newspaper) spotlight a basic contradiction. On the one hand, they pretend to tell your future based upon the timing of your birth and the alignment of the stars and/ or planets. Philosophers have called this assumption "astral determinism."
This means simply that the stars and planets determine your future, hence the phrase, "written in the stars." On the other hand, however, when the predictors finish telling just what will befall you, they move onto the next part of the column. They offer advice. But this advice you may take or leave, as though you have a free choice to make, the outcome of which no star determines.
So they
assume astral determinism when predicting, and then assume its opposite when advising. One simply cannot have it both ways. The only way to resolve this contradiction derives from saying that the heavenlies determine SOME things, but not others. This avoids contradictory impulses, however, at the cost of engaging a purely arbitrary (pick and choose whichever you like) approach to what stars do and do not determine about your life. And yet their charts promise a principled (non-arbitrary) way to know the future. So this option makes no logical headway either.
Either way then, assumptions necessary to the trade of star-traffickers show themselves bogus. The whole thing turns out a useless mirage. Astral determinism thus represents a phoney idea, and we can show this with a little logical rigor.
Finally then, we wish to add logical insult to mystical injury by noting that our refutation of astral determinism posits a fairly clear and obvious problem for their trade. And like the bug who never quite manages to avoid the fast-approaching windshield -- they should have seen it coming.
About the Author
Christopher Brown has taught English and philosophy at the collegiate level. He attended the California State University and then did hard time in seminary (Orlando, FL). He now manages 5 websites, including:
http://blogique.blogspot.com
http://ophirgoldcorp.blogspot.com and
http://scriberight.blogspot.com
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