Amen to that, if you’ll excuse the pun! Unfortunately, a Chinese Dawkins would probably have about as much success as someone trying to explain secular humanism in the U.S. Bible Belt.

1. Defining terms: what is astrology? does it make claims to being absolute? what is belief in astrology? what is disbelief in astrology? does astrology have any existence outside the realm of “belief”? what is astrological accuracy?

2. In what sense could a scientific study of astrology be “objective” since it is so often obviously planted in the realm of subjective belief?

3. Most people who would potentially be doing experiments and also most who would potentially be the subjects of experiments have subjective understandings of the object being tested that would necessarily contribute to the experiment’s results. In both respects this would take away from anything approaching “objectivity.”

4. Largely one would be subjecting people’s emotions and feelings to scientific study–i.e., does this horoscope apply to you or not? This is flimsy data.

5. Another problem is that one must be careful about taking a general category like “astrology” and trivializing it to one astrologist’s column as it applies to 12 people off the street. The phenomenon is obviously much larger than that, and if one were to approach it in a style similar to Dawkins, one would first need to analyze whether or not there were similarities among horoscopes written by a larger set of astrologists at any given time. Of course this would also be a subjective undertaking.

6. Whatever the case, a rigorous scientist would have to understand astrological methods, assuming they exist (i.e. how they go about creating horoscopes–do they all do it the same way, what factors might contribute to different results on their own part, etc.) in order to account for possible differences between different astrologers’ own results. The desire to “prove” or “disprove” is also problematic in these last two. There is a general interpretive problem here–how absolute and singular is the meaning of any given data?

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I realize all this makes me look like someone trying to “defend” astrology, but that’s really not the case at all. What I am trying to defend more is the power of subjective imagination, which “science” often wants to stamp out, as if it had nothing to do with life and rejuvenation.

If I was a scientist and I really was interested in the phenomena, I would try to take the focus as much away from individual subjectivity as possible, and instead turn to something like neurobiology, where science perhaps has more valid claims to objective measurement. For example, how might things like gravitational forces/fields between planets, moons and the sun affect people physiologically, subatomically, neurologically, whatever. But of course first one would have to identify to a way to measure those forces–are they linear, spacial? do they move, change direction? etc. From the perspective of science, that’s probably all in the land of poppycock today.

As for putting Dawkins in 1(b), I would only put him there superficially. He’s called his show “The Enemies of Reason,” which sounds sort of fascist, and he uses emotional music to drive home points which he considers “rational.” He’s making big bucks off all this so it probably makes no difference to him. He likes the “gravitas” that science brings, but really he’s claiming ground that hasn’t been secured yet. In other words, the “investigation” has already been finished and there’s nothing more to be said.

Also, why wouldn’t you put Dawkins in the 1(b) camp? He’s not a physicist, but I’m sure he’s all for the investigation and study of gravity.

Scientifically speaking, it seems fairly certain that there is some force or another holding the solar system together. There is an invisible set of forces which keep the planets revolving in more or less fixed orbits around the sun. The choices are:

1. These forces are able to affect us in some ways.

1(a). The ways these forces affect us are unknowable.
1(b). It is possible to investigate the ways these forces affect us.

2. These forces are unable to affect us in any way.

2(a). Ridicule everyone who disagrees.
2(b). Maintain skepticism but remain open to all possibilities.

I personally feel like there isn’t enough evidence to prove or disprove either of these beliefs, but this guy Dawkins is going with approach 2(a), which upon review, does not seem the most inquisitive or “rational”. Also, why the heavy dependence on dramatic music? Could it be that he is appealing to things other than “reason” in his audience (i.e. tugging on heart strings)? His own “experiments” were far from scientific, and if he thinks gazing off into billions of stars at night is such a profound way of dealing with existence, he’s just putting his romanticism on stage front and center.