Brief Answer:

Why do you think any of these things are okay to dabble with? Listen to the reasons those who practice these things give, and find reasons why these reasons are unreasonable. Have you considered the Bible provides very clear warnings and shows serious consequences for those engaging in such practices and beliefs?

Detailed Answer:

Either what is believed about those practices is true, or false. If false, they are worthless, except for entertainment value, and this is questionable entertainment. Paying for and being fed lies is an odd thing for anyone to do for entertainment. Further, gaining a false sense of control over your future, or worse, thinking your fate is already set so no need to do the hard work of addressing personal challenges or striving for better limits your capacity for growth.

Not saying this to shame anyone, we all fall into inaccurate thinking at times, especially when people purposefully try to deceive us. I recently lost of a good amount of money being deceived into bad investment advice. This is written in the hope readers would be benefitted by moving away from worthless, or more likely, harmful practices, and even look into why you feel the need to engage in it. The answers would be interesting and potentially make life better.

Many claim they do not really believe in the claims behind the practices, but just have fun with them. What is more likely, and has been verified by what I have witnessed in those who claim to participate only for entertainment value (if you do not accept my observation, check for yourself), is that these people really do think there is some truth in these things, and just claim they don’t believe to avoid stigma. Sometimes people judging you for your potentially harmful behavior is good for, if you are open enough for change.

When giving presentations and then answering people’s questions in various regions throughout Cuba, someone asked about the practice of Santería, I said I could not provide any answers as I was too ignorant of the beliefs and practice, though I had some basic knowledge and even witnessed a ritual at a rural river. I will need more research time and interaction with practitioners in these areas before able to understand why people engage, what they believe, and what evidence supports their beliefs. But will start with an easy one, astrology, and will add more below as time allows.

However, there are commonalities between all these practices, which leads to one primary answer. So much of what I have seen, and studies have indicated, is nothing beneficial coming from these practices, and instead saturation in deceptive teaching for the purpose of monetary or status gain. On the other hand, if these practices can actually perform what they claim, then this is beyond scientific understanding. Every attempted natural explanation of these phenomena through science, at least those shown to me, has been truly absent of any reasonable or evidence-backed explanation. Therefore, if true, some supernatural entity is at work. 

If the Bible has God behind it, then its claims about these practices are also valid. The Bible condemns all these practices, and while noting some supernatural activity may occur, the source is not from God, but those opposing God, and therefore have a hatred towards humanity and, while having access to power or the ability to do some supernatural activity, will ultimately harm the practitioner and those close to them. 

Imagine someone wants to stay with you and your family, and you let them into your house. What if you could see past their façade? They do not really want to add something good to you; they hate you. This situation has happened through history, and may be your situation if dealing with any of the above practices. Those opposed to God are wolves seeking to devour any of his flock. Adapting a line from Game of Thrones, “You let one wolf in the door and the sheep are never safe.” 

As a Christian, Jesus is enough, and demonstrated absolute authority over all. Unfortunately, some choose to grasp at taking more control into their own hands, and thereby place themselves into the pathologically negative control of the agents behind those sources.

Astrology

What is it?

Astrology has been defined as the study of relationships between the stars and planets and human affairs. The belief the heavens can influence life on earth goes back to almost every society in history. Ancient people must have discovered observations of the stars and planets could predict the coming of the seasons, when to plant crops, when certain animals would give birth and numerous other events vital to survival. So you can see why it seemed natural that the positions of the heavenly bodies could also predict, or even influence, human behavior.

Why do people practice it?

You would have to ask and get honest answers from practitioners why they believe and/or practice astrology, but we can guess some reasons due to sociology and psychology. Being so engrained in cultures, it is not surprising astrology still exists, in fact, a tabloid offering an annual horoscope can see its circulation rise by a quarter million or so, serious astrology was the subject of 100 periodicals and about 1000 books in print as of the 1990’s, online astrology is a multi-billion dollar industry, and these sources present astrology as credible, and even claim scientific support. About 1/3 of Americans surveyed believe astrology is “very scientific” or “sort of scientific”.[1]

Additionally, there are psychological reasons pulling on all of us, and some are pulled into astrology. The zodiac claims to provide introspective information about your personality, and predict positive decisions and future outcomes on this knowledge. With as vague and generalized as the personality traits are, everyone can feel connection with their zodiac personality and relationship situation at times. There are other applicable psychological motivators, an interesting explanation can be found on the site Psychological Corner, in an article from 2024, “19 Psychological Reasons Why People Believe in Astrology“.

Even if the reasons why someone believes in something are not solid, it does not make that belief false, reality and corresponding evidence is what exposes a belief as false, which is what we will briefly cover next.

How can we know astrology’s accuracy is exactly equal to blind guessing?

You can test this and get the results yourself, I will show a method my dad had a class of mine from middle school do. But first will provide some basic understandings to consider.

• Astrology lacks a mechanism by which it could work—how is the position of the stars at your birth supposed to affect your personality and fate?
• The earth’s motion has pushed our astrological signs off by a whole month.
• Studies have shown astrological readings are unable to predict outcomes any better than pure chance.[2]

There is no mechanism by which stars or planets impact your personality or fate. These massive objects do have gravitational and electromagnetic forces, however, these forces on us a far, far weaker than the gravity and electromagnetic forces from objects vastly closer to us on Earth. So how could we be impacted, and what evidence do you have to support your belief?

Astronomers and astrologers both studied the constellations for thousands of years, and since the time the zodiac was first observed and astrologers tied certain characteristics and impact to specific constellations, these constellations have drifted by around 30 degrees (or a whole month). Thus, you may tell people on dating sites you are an Aries, but if horoscopes were connected to their present day constellations, then you would be a Pisces.

An article in Scientific American noted a study in the prestigious journal Nature:

In 1985, physicist Shawn Carlson conducted a double-blind test of the idea that astrological charts could accurately describe our personality traits and published his results in the journal Nature.

Carlson asked 30 American and European astrologers, ranked by their peers as among the best, to review the astrological charts for 116 people without meeting them in person. He then provided three personality descriptions for each of the 116 people. One description was the one that actually described the subject. The other two were real personality descriptions … but they described other people. Carlson asked the astrologers to match the right personality with the person’s astrological chart.

Overall, the astrologers matched one in three charts correctly, so their results were no better than they would be based on random chance.

Carlson concluded that astrologers likely work off of the body language and reactions of their clients during in-person meetings to improve their odds at correctly guessing relevant details about their lives. That art is known as “cold reading”.[2]

There are other obvious answers exposing astrology as false, such as the inability to show significant predictions as any reliable theory could. For example, astronomy and physics predicted the existence of Neptune and Uranus, not only did astrology fail to provide such relevant predictions, but also had to add these new planets into their own astrological theory in an ad hoc manner. Also, which of the different astrologies (Western, Vedic, or Chinese) is correct, as these give different readings for the same person.

Divorce rates do not coincide with astrological compatibility predictions. Positions of stars do not show a greater likelihood of going into one career over another. Studies also show subjects who read horoscopes are just as likely to feel the horoscope applies to them when the terms of the reading are reversed (i.e., instead of saying, “You’re an outgoing, lively person,” it might say, “You tend to be quiet and protective of your privacy.”). These and other studies are outlined at Astronomical Society of the Pacific: Education.

Using astrophysics and mathematical models, we can calculate the position of a star or planet for any date. So if astrologers ever gave us the mechanism by which these supposed positions impact us and our fate, then we could add that to the calculation and literally have a picture of your entire life – entirely beyond your control. Do you really believe that is how reality operates, the positions of stars controls your personality type and future?

Here is the experiment my dad ran, which you can reproduce yourself to demonstrate astrology is absolutely worthless as a source for truth, or your future.

• Find a site online providing daily horoscope fortunes.
• Print out all of yesterday’s predictions for each sign of the zodiac (which corresponds to a birthdate range) on a piece of paper as a master list.
• Then create a “test list” as shown in the chart below, which has all the predictions, but has removed all the zodiac signs each prediction belongs to.
• For as many people as you can get, handout a copy of the test list, and have them put their initials and date of birth next to the prediction that specifically fit them yesterday.
• Follow this same process on a different day, with as many people and as many days as you can.
• Finally, take all the test lists and compare to the master list. Circle every initial and birthdate that was placed in the correct zodiac prediction on the master list matching their birthdate. Place an “X” over every initial and birthdate that guessed their zodiac prediction wrong. Count up all the circles and divide by the total number of all guesses (sum of all circles and X’s).

The chart is an example with just 3 of the predictions for the day I visited the horoscope site, and the column in the middle is for people to sign their names next to the prediction they think was correct about their day. On a hidden “Master List,” 1 is the prediction for Aries, 2 is Gemini, 3 is Capricorn, etc., and would list the full 12 different horoscopes for the day with their accompanying zodiac sign.

Each and every person should be able to blindly (without having your horoscope labeled) pick their specific horoscope prediction out of the twelve for the day, near or at 100% of the time, if horoscopes are true. You will be closer to the random guessing value of just under 10% if horoscopes are simply a carnival trick.

If horoscopes were entirely worthless, unable to actually predict the future, then a person just picking randomly would guess the correct horoscope 1 out of 12 times, or would guess right almost 10% (1 / 12 = 8.3%) of the time. Since there are 12 horoscopes, you always have a 1 in 12 chance of guessing your matching zodiac prediction.

Statistically, there can be a test out there with guesses at a really high accuracy percentage. That is just statistics. Does that mean horoscopes are true for that group? No. If you really believe in horoscopes, feel free to test this yourself for many days, as the more information you gather, the more your results will tend toward the worthless 10%.

The image below is the permanently accurate forecast for all Zodiac signs.

[1] “Science and Engineering Indicators 2018” Digest (NSB-2018-2), National Science Foundation, January 2018. Also noted: “Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life study (2009) using a different question found that 25% of Americans believe in “astrology, or that the position of the stars and planets can affect people’s lives.” Gallup found the same result with the same question in 2005 (Lyons 2005). In contrast, similar to 2014, the 2010 GSS found that 6% saw astrology as “very scientific,” and 28% said they saw astrology as “sort of scientific” (34% total).”

[2] Sabrina Stierwalt, PhD. “Is Astrology Real? Here’s What Science Says.” Scientific American, June 25, 2020.