Sometimes even I forget how many stupid things people still believe. When I debate religion with believers, I often use astrology as an example of something that is totally absurd but once was given credence by a huge number of people, to show that just because something is widely believed does not mean that it has any merit. One has to go beyond that and provide evidence. The idea that the configuration of planets and stars could have an effect on people’s daily lives is now considered so absurd that to publicly espouse it is to declare oneself to be primitive and superstitious. In the Dover trial on so-called intelligent design, the point where advocate Michael Behe was forced to concede that if their definition of science were to be accepted then astrology could be considered a science too was considered to be a low point for them, discrediting their carefully constructed case that intelligent design was a science.

Hence it always comes as a shock to me when I find that many people still take astrology seriously and determine both big and small decisions on the basis of it. It is to the great shame of my native country Sri Lanka that its political leaders always consult astrologers before making any major decisions, though for a few there were suspicions that they were not true believers and cooked the books (so to speak) by having astrologers provide answers that the leaders had already determined on a more rational basis. Astrology is highly malleable and open to wide interpretation and it is not hard to find an astrologer who will tell you what you want to hear. But the very fact that even these suspected skeptics felt the need to go through this charade of publicly avowing belief shows the power that this particular superstition has on the general public.

For example a new harbor is nearing completion at the southernmost tip of the island to serve as cargo container distribution center. This harbor is being built by Chinese engineers with aid from the Chinese government. A news report says that astrologers had given an ‘auspicious’ time for the opening of the harbor but it was 10 months ahead of the scheduled completion date. The opening went ahead anyway because what government would want to risk offending the stars and the planets?

Despite the Chinese Company in charge of this Hambantota project objecting to the holding of this ceremony ahead of the completion of the project, the water filling opening ceremony was carried out on the 15th of August owing to the fact that there is no suitable auspicious time (nekath time) in the days ahead for the President.
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Answering inquiries made by us, the Chinese Engineers engaged in the Hambantota port project stated the water filling ceremony was really scheduled to be launched about 10 months later.

As a result of this astrology-based stupidity, the engineers now have to work around the premature release of the water, adding to the cost and the time of the project.

For people who believe in astrology, the time of birth is of great importance because the alignment of the stars and planets at that moment supposedly determines the future of the child, even to the extent of predicting whom they will marry, their careers, health and prosperity, etc. So the exact time to the minute is noted when a baby is born so that astrologers have the most accurate information to work with it. (On a personal note, my older daughter was born in Sri Lanka and my younger daughter in the US – yes, we are the proud parents of an ‘anchor baby’! – and in both cases there were discreet requests from extended family members as to the time of birth. We of course deliberately did not bother to record this information and since we knew what the purpose of the request was, we refused to give out indications of even the rough time of day, thus foiling their plans to create astrological charts for them.)

Given my awareness of the influence of astrology at least on the Indian sub-continent, I should not have been surprised to read an article by Eric Bellman in the October 5, 2010 online edition of the Wall Street Journal that women in India are using astrology to determine the best time to have a baby and then requesting their doctors to perform c-sections at that time. This is raising serious health and ethical questions because there can be negative health consequences with artificially shifting the date of birth. As Bellman says, “Moving a birth up by even one week can lead to complications such as breathing problems in babies whose lungs have not fully developed. Mothers face increased risk of infection, blood loss and even death from the procedure, which delivers the baby through a surgical incision.” But apparently for the mothers who believe, “the large potential benefits of having a child blessed by the stars outweigh concern about potential complications from a caesarean.”

Although beliefs in astrology transcend any specific religion, there is no question that the irrational ways of thinking that religion encourages make people more susceptible to this kind of nonsense. I wonder if there are any atheists who take astrology seriously?