What would happen if astrology were suddenly proven true?

Yakaru of Spirituality Is No Excuse wrote up an interesting thought-experiment — what might happen if astrology started to produce scientifically verified, empirically validated results? His answer: not what the astrologers might hope.

The first repercussions

* Newspaper astrologers would find the rug being pulled out from under them. Mainstream astrologers would gloatingly remind them that they’ve been saying all along that it isn’t proper astrology, rather it just provides skeptics with an “easy target”.

* People would realise that the daily astrology column is completely pointless, and newspapers would apologetically let their highly paid astrologers go back to the dole office. Planetary positions would be incorporated in the weather forecast.

* Chinese, Mayan, Tibetan, Arab and Vedic astrologers would all be devastated by the news that their astrology has now been definitively shown to be wrong and would be out of a job. Or they would be desperately trying to square their system with the triumphant one.

Some might try to ascertain that they are all “right in their own way”, but this won’t work. If that were the case, we would quickly have landed back at the current situation, where a random system is as good as classical astronomy.

Standards for evidence would now be let loose in the previously harmonious profession. And that would cause further problems.

I mentioned such a possibility in one of my comments on the gigantic astrology debunking thread, regarding what a boon to humanity the empirical verification, testing and winnowing-out of the correct interpretation of the heavens might be. I was hoping Robert Currey or some other astrologer might take the bait and agree, as frankly, this would mean well over 90% of the astrologers out there would be, ultimately, wrong. Most of their interpretations would be bunk, the vast majority of the astrologers would be cast to the wayside, and only one true set of effects could be scientifically verified and validated. That knowledge would become part of the body of human knowledge; software would be written to provide correct interpretations without the need for a “trained astrologer” to interpret the results. It would change the world of astrology from a priest-class set of authority figures, to a scientific, precise, measurable one that can be correctly interpreted.

The only assumption you need to make, to understand that the world of astrology would not survive such empirical validation, is the assumption that this universe has a specific set of principles under which it operates; that it “works one way”, and that only one interpretation of the facts is correct. Then their whole house of cards falls apart.

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What would happen if astrology were suddenly proven true?
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