Arguments against believing in stars

I have tried hard to understand how the Mars or the Jupiter affects my life. I really wanted to know how my destiny is locked in the triangles and squares of the ‘kundli’. Unfortunately, I couldn’t explain to myself that a mass of gas and sand that is millions of miles away from me was responsible for the circumstances of my life, which, rationally, can be more attributed to my own actions (or lack of actions) than anything else.

Came to think about it, and I started analyzing why people believe in stars. There are some arguments for astrology. One is: in the universe, each particle, each atom affects the atmosphere around it. The same way, each particle or atom is affected by that same atmosphere. The bigger the particle, the bigger is the influence. That way, the most influential particles in the universe around us can possibly be the sun, the Saturn and the Jupiter. We all now that even the ocean gets affected by the moon in terms of tides in the full moon. So, humans, who are less powerful than the ocean, are subject to the effects of the positions of the sun, the moon, the Mars, the Saturn, the Jupiter and other planets and stars. Logical isn’t it? Just one point is missed. The ocean doesn’t have free will. Humans do. We can wake up or go to sleep anytime we want. We can work hard for what we want. We can just will and make tunnels under the sea, or travel in the air, or build skyscrapers or run planes into them. We can do all these, without a thought of what the Mars is planning for our lives. Just as we can will our minds not to be affected by a bad boss or an irritable spouse, we can will not to be affected by the stars and the planets. How? Simple. Just by not thinking about it. By analyzing the causes of our problems and working out solutions for them.

Now for the believers. We say that we believe in God. At the same time, we wear stones and somehow think that it would protect us from happening of undesirable events. But if we really believe in God and have full faith in Him, we should accept that whatever He shall do to us shall be in our best interest. If the belief in God is strong enough, the question of believing in stars does not arise.

Psychologically too, it is always tempting to blame the circumstances of our lives (or the happening or non-happening of something) to someone or something other than our self. And what better scapegoats than far away mass of gases that are never going to come and complain why we are discrediting them for what happens with us!

They say astrology is mathematics. Mathematics also has another concept called probability. Let us buy that stars do affect our lives. The probability of them affecting our circumstances positively and negatively over our life time is equal. Stars can not be angry on somebody for full sixty years! They might be favorable to us or against us for a particular period of time, the probability of both, in the long run, shall be equal. This means that the positive and negative effects of stars shall even out over a period of time and, consequently, what improvements we want in our lives and our world entirely depends on our own actions.

Also, most of the times, the analysis of the stars is more like post-mortem. It doesn’t always and accurately predict some good or bad happening or non-happenings beforehand. What’s the use of it then?

Our physics professor had a really wonderful concept. In Gujarati, the gender of all the planets of the solar system, including the sun, is male, except the earth who is a female. He used to say that there is only one sister between nine brothers. So whoever hurts the sister, in terms of polluting her, is going to attract the anguish of the brothers! He, who takes care of the earth, need not be afraid of her ‘brothers’.

Ending with a saying in Gujarati, that a man is affected more by his ‘purvagrah’ (prejudice) than any other ‘grah’ (star or planet).
-Issued in ‘universal’ interest on behalf of the Sun, the Uranus, the Neptune, the Jupiter, the Saturn, the Mars, the Mercury, and other planets and stars by ‘Antariksh’ himself!