Revisiting the dialogue on Astrology and Hindu Revisionism

It is not very uncommon to engage with my sister on some topics of intellectual interest and curiosity and have mostly been enriched and enlivened by such exchanges.

So when I shared with her a document circulating on the internet, being a detailed analysis of the pseudo-scientific  nature of astrology bearing the authorship of Kushal Sidhanta, as well as my take on the fascination for Vedic Math, this is how she responded:

"I do not possess much knowledge on the subject of vedic maths and on astrology , my thoughts are that while it may be precise science,I do not believe there are people who know that science well enough to interpret it.  To me it will remain a mystery like many other questions"

Though a humble and non-committal response, it could not be considered an agnostic one, tending more towards tact that somehow seemed to give these forms of quackery the benefit of doubt. 

Setting aside my initial disappointment, I thought it necessary to go into a longer exposition of the issues raised by her reply. 

Coming to religion, astrology and Vedic 'sciences', I will deal with astrology first. The attached document speaks volumes about the true nature of astrology and debunks many of its myths and fond theories that people hold onto.

Astrology can be treated as a hobby or even an art, but it is surely not a science or even a credible field of study.  Astrology of yore and today have their origins in astronomy. Astronomy as we know today has made great strides in its field of study and knowledge and is rightly regarded as a scientific discipline. 

Astrology has stood still frozen in time and has learned nothing from the discoveries of astronomy. Astrology is just like religion because its purpose is not to discover and understand objective truth or reality, and refine its findings on the basis of continuing observation, study and experiment, but to sell and promote fixed/static or stagnant ideas by persuasion and rhetoric.

Astrology sets itself up for sure failure by its foundational claim that it can predict the future accurately. 

Because of the inherent complexity of both nature and humanity and its interaction and interdependence, we can infer reasonably that accuracy of prediction is an impossibility. We can only forecast many things probabilistically and keep trying to reduce the margin of error. 

Here science and technology can, with its constantly improving tools and knowledge do a far better job than Astrology which is handicapped by erroneous assumptions and bases and has a pathetically crude and primitive tool-set and theory. 
 

When astrologers cannot predict weather changes and natural calamities, is it not too much to expect them to predict the future of human beings?!!!

Also at an epistemological level, astrology is self-contradictory since its ability to predict outcomes assumes a pre-deterministic world and phenomena, which we surely know from experience is not the case. But its solutions and recommendations allow or call for an in-deterministic world, which negates its primary assumption. So you can see that already puts Astrology into an Catch-22 trap. 

About Vedic Math and sciences, if you believed all the Hindutva spin-doctoring, it would look like the composers of Vedas and Upanishads were scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, astrologers, surgeons and what not, all rolled into one, apart from of course being the great temporal and spiritual theologians. 

Only the religiously dewy-eyed can accept such preposterous claims without demur and examining evidence from History. 

Surely Indian civilization made a lot of progress in science and other disciplines of knowledge in the post-vedic age, prior to the onset of Christianity and well into the 1st millennium of Christian age or CE (Common Era). 

But to trace its roots in the Vedas, Upanishads and other relics of a purely religious and metaphysical nature is a classic case of a Hindutva Houdini act of transposing/muddling history, facts and myth.

It is important to look closer at the historical time-lines of the Indian, Persian, Greek and Roman civilizations to get a better idea of cultural and social progress of India in the pre-christian and early christian eras. Quite a few components of this progression especially in the Greek and Indian civilizations have significant parallels and can be considered to be co-terminus or co-extensive.

But this needs dispassionate study and analysis which is surely something beyond the taste, patience and intellectual temper of the savages of the Hindutva brigade, who in some of their presentations have trivialized the comparisons between ancient Indian and Greek accomplishments into something of a running race in which Indian Math is shown to be winning hands-down.