In the first century A.D. the Philosopher and Theologian St. Augustine said “… you have made us for yourself [God], and our heart is restless until it rests in you (Augustine, 1998).

Back in the 1500 to 1600 hundreds the child prodigy, mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal (Blaise Pascal, 2008) said “Man tries unsuccessfully to fill this void with everything that surrounds him, seeking in absent things the help he cannot find in those that are present, but all are incapable of it. This infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite, immutable object, that is to say, God himself (Pascal, 2008).”

The great apologist and linguist C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter to Mr. Vanauken in the 1950’s in which he said; “If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or w[oul]d. [sic] not always be, purely aquatic creatures (Lewis, 2007)?”

As recently as 2007, the neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg has identified areas of the brain that he believes may be hard-wired for responding to religious activities (Gajilan, 2007).

I believe the continued interest in Astrology, despite its lack of scientific basis is a manifestation for a desire to know and understand and seek something to fill a void that we all have as humans. We want to know where we come from, why we’re here, and where we are going. I believe that the interest in astrology provides at least the positive benefit of keeping people open minded, understanding that not everything can be simplified to a mathematical equation (e.g. how does one describe love with numbers), I think the negative impact of Astrology is how much money people actually spend on it; and how much some people actually schedule their lives around it – in that respect, I believe that people would be much better releasing themselves from a belief that has no evidential basis.

 

 

 

References

Augustine, S. (1998). Confessions. New York: Oxford University Press.

Blaise Pascal. (2008, October 14). Retrieved October 14, 2008, from WikiPedia.Org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_pascal

Gajilan, A. C. (2007, April 5). Are humans hard-wired for faith? Retrieved October 14, 2008, from Cnn.Com: http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/04/04/neurotheology/

Lewis, C. (2007). The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Pascal, B. (2008). Pensees and Other Writings (Oxford World’s Classics). New York: Oxford University Press Inc.