1948? Yep, I'm also officially an old bastard now too. Thus, you learn a few things along the way.
That's why I only believe in not believing. ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote: ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote: Astrologers have methods for determining if the TOB recorded on the birth certificate is accurate. For example, by one's gender. Also by details of one's life. For example, a jyotishi looked at my birth time and asked if I had known my Dad's mother. I said yes and by using details of her life, he was able to determine my accurate birth time. Which was a few minutes before the time on my birth certificate so that made sense to me. I've been told that nurses back then, 1948, stepped out of the delivery room to record the time. I do not believe this has ever been tested, so it is a supposition that an astrologer, usinging whatever methods they use, can discover an actual birth time that is recorded inaccurately. My hypothesis is that rectification of times is a dodge developed to counteract the discrepancies that arise when astrology fails to predict events. By adjusting the time, the chart then 'works better'. If we had documented evidence of births with accurately recored times, then a double-blind study of astrologers trying to find those times when that information is withheld in various ways would be possible to see if they can really do that. My bet is they cannot because astrology is largely a matter of delusional thinking. Notice that the TMO has never published any study showing the scientific validity of astrology. There have been very few double-blind tests of any astrological system that have been well designed. There was one done at UC Berkeley some 25 years ago with Western astrology, and all the work was done by professional astrologers, and the result came out no better than chance. That study dealt with personality characteristics, which are difficult to define. The astrologers in that test were matching horoscopes with a standardised personality inventory. Documented evidence of birth times was required for the participants. The result was published in Science. Jyotish, which seems more event driven, would be easier to test. But because it has the same delusional underpinnings as Western astrology, I do not see how the results would be any better. There are questions here which seem impossible to parse. Why, for example, would the sex of a child have an effect on the birth time? What laws of nature would be invoked and how do they function?
