Something Completely Different:

Not quite. Feel free to correct them, and any honest preacher should welcome the challenge...but don't try and use your own wisdom and secular psychological sociological world view to rewrite the belief. The belief itself won't allow such correction since secular thinking by definition is incapable of the belief which the preacher *should* represent...though to be fair many of them don't.

But you never do. That's not a "problem"; it's a necessary starting point. If the source does turn out to have some truth to it, then we can look at the source of the source. The only reason we "need" to disagree is if you choose fantasy over fact. But you have only human wisdom to assess what is "divine inspiration". No, the jury is in. Your refusal to accept the verdict doesn't make the verdict less of a fact.

Why not? That is what you all are trying to do to the whole damned world, isn't it?And with the most devastating consequences for the human species.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

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The problem is that you attribute the source as human authors rather than divine authorship. It is why we can never agree

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It’s amazing how a vital doctrine only appears in a vague verse in a single book of questionable origins. And can’t be backed up by real evidence either. It seems that the problem is at your end.

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Our side settles on divine inspiration, though we cannot prove it to the standards that all people would and should agree on...yet.

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By which you mean you settle on your own interpretations (sometimes self-serving) of what you call “divine inspiration” (often ignoring anything the Bible may say to the contrary). And your justification is it’s a dogma you refuse to question ?

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The jury is still out and it may be a hundred years before a verdict is reached.

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So long as dogmatic believers continue to worship their idols, why should it ever end ?Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Such as?(Your odium toward Christianity is obscene.) (And Percy's censorship is just as obscene)ABE: Christianity is the best thing that ever happened to the world. The idea and legalities of human rights, civil rights, etc came out of Christianity. It's all getting twisted in recent years but Christianity is where it originated. Christianity is the reason for the prosperity of the west and America in particular, it's the reason America has always been a force for good in the world. This antagonism toward Christianity that has been growing over the last few decades is going to destroy everything good. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Nope. Judaism, for one, had already developed those ideas before Christ was ever heard of. The reason for the prosperity of the west and America in particular was largely thieving from the east and the north and the south. If you want Christianity to take credit for that thieving, okay. America joined the forces of good briefly, say from 1942 to 1945.

I'm not sure about that. I've often been fascinated by things that I consider hokum. I never got into astrology, but I went through a Nostradamus phase, and for years was really into ancient aliens stuff. And many of the people here on this website are those who've actively sought out a place to argue with believers of what they consider nonsense. I'd think EvC members are exactly the sort to study things they disagree with.Anyway, I did my Café Astrology chart. I'm the same sign as you, incidentally. I was somewhat baffled by this bit:

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There is a marked fear of losing control, and this might stem from some traumatic event in childhood, or the childhood might have been crisis-ridden or emotionally-charged in general.

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It might stem from a traumatic event in childhood? I thought the whole point of this was that my personality traits were determined by the stars, rather than events in my life. Or is it saying that I'm suppsed to be predisposed to develop a marked fear of losing control if anything traumatic happened to me in childhood?It's got to the heart of our disagreements though:

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Some of the most skeptical people are Lunar Virgos. They can't help but poke holes when faced with others' blind faith. Their criticism can be maddening, and their insistence on seeing the practical in anything emotional can be challenging, especially if you are the dreamy type.

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Was this written by Phat?It's all very consistent and convincing....

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you can be intensely fearful of, or threatened by, change

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(...)

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You thrive on change and variety

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I got bored before the end, but can send you the pdf if you're actually interested in these things. The name is, of course, fake.Incidentally, when I exported to pdf it added a legal disclaimer:

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Information in this program is for entertainment purposes only. Cafe Astrology is not responsible for how this information is used

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Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

Had to undo a lot of my posts on this thread, sorry.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Judaism had no influence on the west.

Tell that to the anti-semites.

Confirmation bias. (Surely not!) I'm also an Aries and I think you're a complete muppet. So much for the stars.

What's a "complete muppet?"Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Muppet
A person who is ignorant and generally has no idea about anything.Don't talk to me like ya know me, ya muppet
by Lloyd (Stallion) Salas November 14, 2002

Exactly my point, since those conditions happen every 26 months or so. The song says that that constellation brings peace and love and associates that with the Age of Aquarius (which comes around every 26,000 years and lasts about 2000 years).Write it off to poetic license, which hopefully hadn't expired. Yes, it is true that that is what got me started in my studies.It turns out that they were reacting to extreme stereotyping. Scorpios are supposed to intense sex maniacs -- a Scorpio girl in astrology class had the opposite experience in that all the guys would react to her sun sign by crowding around her and try to hit on her. No, I am not a sex maniac, but I do seek hidden knowledge which translates to my curiosity of how everything works, which in turn translates to my interests in reverse-engineering, physiology, science, languages, creation science claims, what the Mueller Report actually says, etc. I see something and I immediately try to figure it out. After almost every discussion that raised some questions, I would start looking for the answers. Since the Internet arrived, I have made a lot of use of it in my research, especially Wikipedia. Also, I keep trying to get the answers, which can be frustrating when dealing with creationists since they are infamous for being evasive.I also tend to remember a lot of things that have happened and to hold grudges, but then I've also heard that that just comes from being Scottish. A disadvantage of being born under the Sign of the Scot is that you are always afraid to look up .

I didn't participate in that one. There have certainly been several explanations for "The Star of Bethlehem", including that it was just made up for the story.An astrological explanation such as you present would fit in that the Magi would have been astrologers themselves. They would have certainly known Jupiter and Venus, so they might have been motivated by some kind of interpretive significance for that particular conjunction, but I cannot think of any other reason. Jupiter-Venus conjunctions should happen at least once a year -- if more than once a year, they'd all be clustered within the same four-month period -- , so they would be almost as common as sand.Remember that planets' slow west-to-east movement against the background of the fixed stars is insignificant compared to their daily apparent east-to-west movement across the sky. But that would be common knowledge for astrologers and hence nothing special.Another basic fact to keep in mind is that Venus, being in an inferior orbit, is confined to always being no more than 47 from the sun -- Venus can never ever be in opposition to the sun, nor square to it. When Venus goes retrograde, it's because it has literally moved over to the other side of its orbit. Jupiter, being in a superior orbit, can be at any angle from the sun. When Jupiter goes retrograde, it's just an optical illusion as Jupiter is in opposition and the earth passes by it.The only time that Jupiter can ever be in conjunction with Venus is when Jupiter is within 47 from the sun. When that happens, Jupiter will actually be at its visual dimmest because it is farthest away from earth and so the light coming from it will have dispersed more as per the inverse-square law. That same effect causes Mars to be very difficult to spot, but Jupiter is so much brighter so you can still see it, but it won't be as bright as when it's in opposition to the sun, at which time it cannot possibly be in conjunction with Venus.For the "Star" to be in the west, it would need to be east of the sun such that it would set after the sun sets, which would make it visible in the western sky after sunset -- during the day, the sun's light would render the "Star" invisible. This consideration would apply regardless of what that "Star"actually was supposed to have been.Another idea was that it could have been a comet. Any given night, a comet doesn't appear to be moving, so any apparent motion would be due to earth's rotation. It would not be visible until night time, so for it to be in the west it would be positioned as described above. A comet should be a rare enough event and very noticeable in the sky.Yet another idea could have been a star having gone nova. I don't know if any candidates have been found for that, though I remember a science fiction short story in which something triggers a star to go nova and that just happened to be seen as "The Star of Bethlehem".That conspiracy theory film, Zeitgeist, speculated that the "Star" was actually Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, and that the three stars of Orion's Belt, which serve as pointers to Sirius, represent the Three Magi. Good story, but it doesn't hold up. First, it's a common sight, so just as nothing-special as a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. Second, they're not in the winter sky, but rather the spring sky. Third, the "Three Magi" set before Sirius, so the "Star would be following the Magi, not the other way around.Trying to get a story fit with reality can be a frustrating endeavor.