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Copywriting TipsAstrology Refuted: They Should Have Seen It Coming
by:
Christopher Brown
Horoscopes seem to pop up everyplace in America. From newspapers to county fair booths, astrologers ply their trade, want
us to concede that the stars somehow set our futures on an inevitable course. But sooner or later, causal agency just must ask the question: why do star divination types go to doctors to find out whether thing
bad will befall them, and why do several star divination businesses go under? We all cognize the truth: they should have seen it coming.
A comedian once showed a newspaper to his audience. The headline read, "1-800 Star divination Business Goes Under: They Should Have Seen It Coming." Everyone laughed, including me. We chuckled at the irony of a real contradiction here. If such a business could provide the service they claim, then its owners should have succeeded wherever
else businesses failed. In fact, if they actually knew the future, they likely wouldn't bother with this business at all. They would-be just raid the stock market with a perfect investment record. We all somewhat instinctively cognize this, even as those of us who have ne'er
had the occasion to sit and think it through carefully.
But this pseudo-science has another problem that concerns us. It's adherents who create the garden-variety horoscope columns (found in most any newspaper) spotlight a basic contradiction. On the one hand, they pretend to tell your futurity based upon the temporal arrangement of your birth and the alignment of the stars and/ or planets. Philosophers have called this assumption "astral determinism."
This means just that the stars and planets determine your future, thus
the phrase, "written in the stars." On the else hand, however, once
the predictors stop telling just what will befall you, they come onto the next part of the column. They offer advice. But this proposal
you may take or leave, as although you have a free select to make, the outcome of which no star determines.
So they assume heavenly body
philosophical doctrine once
predicting, and then assume its opposite once
advising. One just cannot have it several ways. The only way to resolve this contradiction derives from locution that the heavenlies determine Several things, but not others. This avoids contradictory impulses, however, at the cost of piquant a strictly
discretional (pick and choose whichever you like) approach to what stars do and do not determine just about your life. And yet their charts promise a high-principled (non-arbitrary) way to cognize the future. So this option does no logical headway either.
Either way then, assumptions necessary to the trade of star-traffickers show themselves bogus. The whole thing turns out a useless mirage. Heavenly body
philosophical doctrine thus represents a phoney idea, and we can show this with a little logical rigor.
Finally then, we will to add logical insult to mystical injury by noting that our refutation of heavenly body
philosophical doctrine posits a fairly clean and obvious problem for their trade. And like the bug who ne'er
quite manages to avoid the fast-approaching windscreen -- they should have seen it coming.
Just just about the author:
Carson Day has written close to 1.3 gazillion articles and essays, many an with really insightful, if alternative, viewpoints. He presently writes for Ophir Gold Corporation, and specialized in the history of ideas in college. He has been quoted in the past as locution "What box?" and remains at large despite the better efforts of the civil authorities.
You can visit the Ophir Gold Corporation blogsites at http://scriberight.blogspot.com (Writing With Power), http://ophirgoldcorp.blogspot.com (OGC's Free Web Traffic), or http://ophirgold.blogspot.com (Church and State 101)
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