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Josh
Over 2000 years of opposition from the Christian and Moslem religions has not stopped astrology, so the dissapproval of astronomers will have a similar effect. People seem to want to believe.
My wife works in an aged care facility and sees people die every week. There are no bright lights or angels or happy smiling relatives..it's just an organic process which is often unpleasant. People still write books about "life after life" because other people buy them and there is lots of money in it and people just want to believe.
Michael Schemer is a well known skeptic who impersonates psychics and astrologers and tarot card readers. When he reveals to his audience that he is just conning them their reaction is not "...aren't I silly to believe this nonsense, I am so easily fooled..." but anger that someone has attempted to take away thier cherised beliefs.
Science operates on the requirement for evidence to support an hypothesis before it becomes a theory, when is is then accepted as a scientific consensus on how the world works. Gravity, as defined by Sir Isaace Newton, is a set of mathematical equations. There is lots of evidence to support it and can be used to predict future events. Even though it involves action at a distance, is makes predictions that can be tested. And it passes every test. Einsteins equations from his special theory of relativity is still being tested by physicists, and they pass every test. Accordingly, it is generally believed that Einsteins theories accurately describe the Universe as we see it.
Astrology has no such support from any evidence whatsoever. I guess astronomers get sick of people carrying on with this nonsense, and maybe jealous that astrologers earn so much money from being dishonest. A lot of serious minded researchers have tested astrology. Much of this research has been undertaken by psychologists and the like, who are interested in measuring personality. Of the hundreds of studies undertaken, there is no evidence at all that astrology "works" in the sense of predictability - predicting future events or someone's personality. It is a research dead end. There is no hypothesis of how astrology would work, so nothing much to test anyway. The effect that the "gravity" of the Sun amd Moon, much less the far distant planets, has on the human body is totally non-existent. There are no other mechanisms that would account for the effect of the placement of the planets to the events on Earth. There was one French researcher (now deceased) who claimed to have found an influence from when some of the planets were rising at the time of birth on personality and occupation. His work could not be reproduced by other researchers, so he is now discredited. Nevertheless, I notice that the astrology lobby still uses him as a pinup boy to bolster their non-existent credibility.
Sorry to go on a bit but I often come across people who seem to accept astrology and lots of other nonsense beliefs without any foundation, so I need to have my arguments all lined up. There just seems to be so many medieval beliefs out there, that it seems to be part of the human emotional template to want to believe. Science, on the other hand, wants evidence.
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