My Take on Skeptics

[Guest guest]

Hello, everyone.

 

One thing that has often bothered me about the skeptics vs. astrology debate

isn't so much what they say about astrology but the way astrologers have

responded to them.

 

Rather than examine the flaws in the skeptics' arguments, astrologers instead

tend to get skeptics' birth data and then look for flaws in their charts!

("Of course he's a skeptic! He's got Saturn in Capricorn!") This sort of

response is most unfortunate, as it plays right into the skeptics' hands.

 

Back in 1994 there was such an article in a publication which should have

known better -- _The Mountain Astrologer_. It was nothing but an _ad

hominem_ attack on CSICOP founder Paul Kurtz, and CSICOP associates James

"The Amazing" Randi and Carl Sagan (since deceased). It also mentioned the

1977 American Humanist Association's anti-astrology statement, but, in her

zeal to badmouth Sagan, the author neglected to mention that although Sagan

had been invited to sign it, he declined to do so on the grounds of its

logical weaknesses.

 

_The Mountain Astrologer_ has since published at least one other similar

article last year. CSICOP's magazine, _The Skeptical Inquirer_, critiqued

the article, and rather fairly (it even mentioned, and said good things

about, the British Astrological Association's excellent journal,

_Correlations_, prompting me to hunt it down on the web and !) .

_TMA_ responded simply by calling the critique "nasty".

 

Oh well. . .

 

Later,

Kevin/Baraka