posted October 10, 2004 03:43 PM            

2.suppose some thing like a bus or a car accident or even a natural disaster;those who die in it have the same destiny?all of them??and even if they have how come they all are present at the same place and that too at that same time???

there questions have been knocking my head so a quite some time.and also these and the very common questions asked by astrology critics.

posted October 10, 2004 06:54 PM              

I think a certain degree of humility and acceptence that in fact we can't know everything is needed. "Real" science demands the same. It's strange that our society regards psychology/psychiatry as legit, and not astrology, because astrology can't pass the test its critics think it should, yet psychology/psychiatry is far more ignorant of what it claims to study than astrology. Therefore psychology/psychiantry requires perhaps even more faith: shrinks are routinely prescribing drugs which they don't fully understand the way they work or the sideeffects for ailments they are equally baffled by (for example, just withint he last year, they finally can up with *almost* definitive proof that schizophrenia is caused by a completley different chemical in the brain than previously *speculated*, plus tons of new data that helps pinpoint what really is schizophrenia and what are just "schizoprenia-like" but unrelated illness - and these researchers were force to admit that for most of the last century we've be giving people thought to have schizophrenia drugs that A) weren't effecting the wrong brain chemical and hence probably making things worse, which explains the extraordinary failure rate of treatments, or B) they didn't need at all because they had sometimes else and not schizoprenia).

Then something bad happens: a teen on the drug commits suicides or something. Then the whole mental health community is in upheavel over whether the dryg really had a negative effect or should be continued to be used, all because they just don't know, and all they have are theories. So actually they are shooting in the dark far more often than what we'd think "real" science would. If this was astrology, people would be clammoring that this was "proof" astrology is a farce and superstition. It's a double standard, seriously.

At least with astrology, while we can't explain precisely why certain planets effects us the way they do, we have a immense collective store of experience and knowledge that we draw from and continue to refine and gain insight into. We can be wrong frequently, or not really on the mark, but that's our ignorance, and not "proof" that the influences that astrology studies aren't real. But all the same, being able to intuit the universal influences that surround us is not the same as being able to understand something as transcendant, universal and complex as destiny, if such a thing even exists.

posted October 10, 2004 07:37 PM            

Here's an excerpt that ties in to your questions a little:

"The Srange Coincidence of Simultaneous Death

There are many studies indicating that the time of birth has a great deal to do with the way we think, feel, and behave. Unfortunately, most of the evidence for this is in the realm of abnormal psychology.
The twins studied by the Drs. Wilson and Reece were Bobby Jean and Betty Jo Ellen, who were born on August 19, 1930, in Purlear, North Carolina. After a lifetime of similar incidents - accidents, injuries and sickness of amazing "parallelism" in all areas of their lives - both women became mentally ill and reached identical plateaus simultaneously.
On April 11, 1962 in Broughton State Mental Hospital in Morgantown, N.C., a night attendant found Bobby dead. Knowing of the strange affinity each had for the other, she called another ward where Betty was sleeping. The second twin was found lying dead on the floor. Autopsies could not determine the cause of death in either case.
A "strange coincidence" indeed!
Dr. Franz J. Kallmann of the N.Y. Psychiatric Institute, in a monumental report on schizophrenia in identical twins, said his study "abounds in cases in which both partners developed similar types of schizophrenia at practically the same time and with the same outcome of the disease."
Why?"

You really do need to read it for all the different examples he gives and the conclusions he draws. It's very interesting.

As for something a little more mundane, I'll give you an example from my personal life. One day, in one of my highschool classes, the subject of birthdays and such came up. I shared mine and, from across the room a girl (with a nickname really close to mine) said her birthday was the same as mine. Sure enough, a guy that was sitting at my table said he had the same birthday. The girl came to join us and we began to talk. It turns out we were all born on the same day, in the same hospital. I was born in the morning, a few hours before them, but they were born only a few minutes apart. The next day, they came to class with a truly remarkable "coincidence" to share. They were not only born minutes apart, their mothers had been in the same room and they had been delivered by the same doctor! They traded phone numbers and their mothers ended up becoming very good friends ... it turns out that they had been looking for each other for years but had not been able to get in touch! Both the boy and the girl had grown up hearing their parents tell the story of how they were born with another kid at the same time in the same room, lol. Needless to say, we were all kind of shocked. Anyway, the class we were taking was an elective course on, of all things, Philosophy and World Religions ... not exactly the number 1 elective choice for highschool students. Why had we all ended up choosing that class, at that time/period, that year? I was already into astrology at the time, so I kind of helped them out a little with their charts and stuff, and helped them not freak out over this "coincidence". Pretty funny, huh?

posted October 11, 2004 08:31 AM            

we can be wronge frequently?y not take it the other way .we can be right too!

posted October 11, 2004 08:50 AM            

I'm wondering why you bother to suggest evidence of an open mind by your reluctance to conclude that destiny does not exist, yet, a moment later, you insist that free will "had" to have a role in your turning out so humble.

You remark that destiny is just too transcendent a matter for you to do more than speculate on. Is free will, then, somehow less transcendent than destiny, in your opinion?