The article published February 4. at the New Scientist under the title "Born Believers: How your Brain creates God" and the following discussion may be of interest to some of our readers.

Is the writer Michael Brooks saying anything about astrology? It would appear that he lacked an understanding of the 'logos'.

Here's the link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ?full=true

Thanks Andrew, interesting article.

Our brain created God or could it be that God created our brain that way. At least that's what I would have done if I were God, with a wish to have subjects of creation at least to think about me.

[quote=""the article""]That view is backed up by an experiment published late last year (Science, vol 322, p 115). Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas in Austin and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, asked people what patterns they could see in arrangements of dots or stock market information. Before asking, Whitson and Galinsky made half their participants feel a lack of control, either by giving them feedback unrelated to their performance or by having them recall experiences where they had lost control of a situation.

The results were striking. The subjects who sensed a loss of control were much more likely to see patterns where there were none. "We were surprised that the phenomenon is as widespread as it is," Whitson says. What's going on, she suggests, is that when we feel a lack of control we fall back on superstitious ways of thinking. That would explain why religions enjoy a revival during hard times.

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Some etymology explains the word religion as 'reconnecting'. This could stem from early agriculture in which peoples to reassure a good crop permitted some rituals in relation with returning natural and astronomical phenomenae. Perhaps some early roots of astrology. The stoic view of predicting planetary predictions so we could already reconcile with our fate could fit with this.


[quote=""article""]The subjects who sensed a loss of control were much more likely to see patterns where there were none.[/quote]

Do we astrologers do a similar thing? I must admit that sometimes I try to 'find' things in astrology as an 'explanation model' in a way that might go too far, whilst omitting other factors than social circumstances, my own behaviour and simply good/bad luck.

So maybe astrology too was created by the brain.....or were our brains created to perceive the effects of astrology ?