• anar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 hours ago

    Astrology has specifically oppressed swaths of women in the Indian subcontinent. Search for “manglik” for starters.

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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    9 hours ago

    I’ve seen plenty of instances of people being treated unfairly and unjustly due to religious astrology beliefs. Especially women (of Indian descent, also Chinese but my experience is more limited there).

  • mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml
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    13 hours ago

    A belief system that makes claims which are demonstrably untrue is susceptible to being used to oppress people (or elevate them unnecessarily).

    Astrology is bunk. Yes I am fun at parties.

  • vaguerant@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    Sorry to go all Godwin’s law, but astrology can and has been used as a tool of oppression. Nazi Germany had a state-sponsored astrologer, Karl Ernst Krafft, appointed by Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess and Chief Propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Krafft was employed to write astrological propaganda that justified anti-semitism on the basis of celestial events. He was also tasked with using astrological observations to predict threats to the Führer Adolf Hitler and offer military advice.

    Ultimately, it’s not the stars and Moon that do the oppression, just whoever is in charge of divining their meaning, which is also pretty much how religious oppression works.

          • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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            23 hours ago

            We will only be free when the last monarch is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

          • nanoswarm9k@lemmus.org
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            20 hours ago

            Eh not giving up my kinks, but everyone needs to have the right to say no or it’s not fun.

            (sorry, the homebrewed anamist theism is too fun right now, and i got a puppy boy that’s counting on me so… upvotes for thoroughness and enthusiasm)

            • Øπ3ŕ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              9 hours ago

              Religion has been the single most detrimental invention of humankind since civilization’s dawn.

              To the other point, since nearly that same catalyzing point in our history, undying Truth itself can be found in the loving eyes of a goodest boy. (source: my own life has been saved by one on more than a few occasions and ways. 🙇🏼‍♂️🐕🥰)

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours ago

      Religion, as in faith in God, doesn’t oppress anyone. Religion, the institution, oppresses people. If astrology had a comparable institution, it would absolutely oppress people.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        14 hours ago

        Faith oppresses the believer himself because it requires a willingness to believe in things without proof. It’s like saying AIDS doesn’t kill people because it merely weakens their immune system. Astrology believers are primed to believe anything, and often get scammed by their astrologers.

        • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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          12 hours ago

          It’s like saying AIDS doesn’t kill people because it merely weakens their immune system.

          Which is accurate. It’s the infection or cancer that kills you, like the priest or the astrologer oppresses you. The belief might make you more susceptible to oppression, but it’s not what’s oppressing you.

            • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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              8 hours ago

              They don’t understand what I’m saying. Oppression is a specific phenomenon. Becoming susceptible to oppression is not the same thing as being oppressed.

  • CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    One could argue that they lift people up, since there’s a slight canceling of the effect of Earth’s gravity when they’re over head. Conversely, the opposite is true when they’re on the other side of the planet.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 hours ago

      The gravitational effect is only meaningful from the Moon and the Sun.

      The Moon obviously affects the tides, and is very, very slowly making our days longer.

      The Sun is … you know, the center of the Solar System, defines our entire orbit, our year.

      Nothing else is massive enough or close enough to have a meaningful gravitational impact.

      • CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Right, the post mentions “the Moon and stars.” Last I checked, the Moon is still the Moon and the Sun is a star.

        Also, I didn’t say anything about the effect being meaningful. An effect that is non-zero is still an effect even if it is negligible.

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 hours ago

          I mean, if you want to be this pedantic…

          ‘the stars’

          99.999…% of ‘the stars’ are not the Sun.

          99.999…% of ‘the Moon and the stars’ are neither the Moon nor the Sun.

          And… I know you didn’t say meaningful.

          I did. That’s my counter argument to your … hypothetical? argument.

          Further, when I say ‘negligible’ I mean… not actually empirically observable, not statistically different from 0, thus you could not establish any kind of causal mechanism with any legitimate basis.

          Sure, you could calculate a theory of the difference of overall gravitational effect of ‘the stars’, but its going to be again negligible compared to local gravitational variances of the Earth itself, due to the Earth not being perfectly uniformly spherical, nor perfectly radially uniformly dense.