happyboy

why is it that people, otherwise very intelligent and logical people, persist in believing in nonsense like the occult? i personally find the occult to be even more intellectually insulting than religion.

you'd figure that the occult, which promises real results, could be and would have been tested scientifically by now. but strangely enough, the occult, which promises real results, is not a field of scientific endeavor, and never will be.

i have 3 wiccan friends who constantly blather on about magick and rituals, about the power all of us possess, and other nonsense.

i simply cannot understand how the occult survives in the west. it makes no sense to me.

a very aggravated happyboy:banghead:

Shadowy Man

My horoscope said I should believe. And we all know that astrologers wouldn't have any incentive to lead us astray.

-RRH-

One friend of mine writes the horoscope haikus for a local paper. The story he tells me, is that a woman asked him how he figured out the horoscopes. He said that he made them up. She seemed to have trouble accepting that he was not doing any astrology at all, and was, in fact, making stuff up at random.

Thor Q. Mada

The wide spread belief in astrology has always been a mystery to me. As one sceptic wrote: "Why would one/twelfth of the world population have the same miserable day as I have ?" This quotation sums it all up really.
Randomly assembled constellations, at a time when the means of observation were rudimentary, at distances which are too great to have any influence on us , precisely do that: they have no influence on us, except if we allow our mind to think so. Sadly this is very common.

Shadowy Man

Actually it is the fact that one twelfth of the population is having the same miserable day as you are having that people do believe in astrology.

:banghead:

Miss Piggy

The "real" astrology (done by "professional" astrologists) contains a lot of numbers and quasi-scientific jargon. Many people, who don't know much about science, think that astrology is very exact and scientific.

Shadowy Man

Next time someone asks you about astrology just say:

"Tropical or Sidereal?"

That oughta shut 'em up.

Feather

People still believe because for the most part people are primitive unthinking brutes and deserve the horrid mental and physical tortures their unthinking stupidity brings upon them. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to deal with it, too.

Bersec

I agree 100% with Feather. Most people are very intelectually lazy, they do not want to bother "thinking" and connecting the dots. Simplistic pseudo-science and heresay testimonials are more palatable to them.

tk

Reportedly, witchcraft rituals do induce altered states in people and unlock some of their hidden abilities. But how much effect these abilities can have on our interactions with the outside world is another question.