Chuck Missler - Signs in the Heavens

By Chuck Missler

Whats your sign?

This was once a favorite pick-up line for young men who used terms like Far out, and Groovy, man. Its a question that immediately brings to mind the horoscope and daily notices about how Cancers love a change of scenery concerning love and romance and how Aries should avoid Cancers.

This small book is not about astrology.

Astrology is a capital crime under the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures. Fortune telling and observing times as soothsayers were condemned, along with sacrificing children in the fire, consulting familiar (evil) spirits and witchcraft:

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12

I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemarims with the priests; And them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops;

Zephaniah 1:4b-5a

King Josiah tried to cleanse the land of idolatry during his reign, removing the high places and forbidding the worship of any god but the LORD. By the time he arrived on the scene, though, idolatry and the worship of the host of heaven had grown widespread and endemic:

And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.

2 Kings 23:5

Even though he sought to serve the LORD with all his heart, Josiahs purges of idolatry were not enough to save Judah from Gods judgment (2 Kings 22:16-20).

There are a variety of verses that warned the Israelites not to give undue honor to the hosts of heaven, which tells us its not a harmless superstition. There are a number of superstitions the Bible is silent about, but the fact that astrology was marked as a crime worthy of death tells us there is spiritual danger in depending on the stars and planets to give us direction.

In serious astrology, an astrologer creates a natal chart, or horoscope, which is a picture of the night sky at the time and location of birth, stylized with symbols. The positions of the symbols are then interpreted by the astrologist, who uses his or her psychic ability to read the birth chart almost like a crystal ball. Because astrologers claim to access transcendental knowledge, a mystical or spiritual consciousness outside our physical reality, astrology can be an entry into the occult with demonic influences we should avoid like an infectious disease.

A second reason to reject astrology is that theres little if any empirical evidence to support it. No astronomer takes astrology seriously, because theres nothing scientific about it. Mars is not actually the god of war flying through the heavens; its a hunk of red rock. Venus is not the goddess of love; its a planet smothered in choking toxic gasses. There is no mechanism for planet locations to affect our personalities or our love lives.

In 1948, psychologist Bertram R. Forer performed an experiment in which he gave 39 of his students a personality test (which he created) and then purportedly produced personality profiles for each of them based on their answers.

He asked them to rate their own profiles (no peeking at other peoples) from 0 (poor) to 5 (excellent) based on the accuracy of the description. In reality, Forer gave all 39 students the exact same profile, which he pulled together from a collection of horoscope readings. It said:

1. You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
2. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
3. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
4. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
5. Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
6. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
7. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
8. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
9. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others statements without satisfactory proof.
10. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
11. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
12. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
13. Security is one of your major goals in life.

Its easy to see that these kinds of statement apply to most of the people on the planet. The students gave ratings of 4 and 5 to nearly each of the above 13 descriptions, with an average rating of 4.26/5.

As a whole, therefore, the class agreed that Professor Forers methodology for determining their personalities had an 85% accuracy. In reality, the students were demonstrating the power of subjective validation, in which people see a relationship between two unrelated events because they expect to see a relationship. The students did not say, Hey Dr. Forer. This profile could apply to anybody, not just me.

When people read their horoscopes and find themselves in the descriptions, they are allowing themselves to be taken in by subjective validation, now often called the Forer Effect.

Its also called the Barnum Effect after the great entertainer P.T. Barnum, who is often credited with saying, Theres a sucker born every minute.

Astrology is full of these kinds of Barnum statements that most people can apply to themselves.

In a similar kind of test, Michel Gauquelin famously placed an ad in an April 1968 issue of Ici Paris, urging readers to send him their addresses and dates of birth that he might give them a free 10-page personal horoscope analysis.

Benefit from a unique experience the ad declares in French. The experience was no such thing. He sent out the exact same birth chart analysis to more than 500 people under all astrological signs. Specifically, he sent them a birth chart analysis for the mass murderer Dr. Marcel Petiot, who was convicted in 1946 of ruthlessly killing 27 people (although he admitted to more than 60).

Gauquelin also sent respondents a self-addressed envelope with a request for comments on his accuracy. Ninety-four percent of the first 150 responses that came were enthusiastically positive, and 90% had friends and family agree that the descriptions were accurate.