Is Mercury in retrograde messing up your life?

When in the hands of a competent professional, astrology is amazingly accurate. I consider it one of God's greatest gifts, giving us a road map to help us make better critical decisions. After being a professional in the field for over 30 years, I can count on one hand those who felt their chart didn't fit them -- with specifics -- and those who didn't agree either didn't have an accurate birth TIME or they didn't understand that astrology is not a fated, "in concrete" predictive system (which is the problem with people like "Randi"), but rather, a kind of "weather report" of potentials. What I cannot understand is how people can think it's science to predict the tides due to the Earth/Moon cycles, but cannot admit to a Mars cycle, a Venus cycle, Saturn cycle, etc. when they are ALL part of an organic whole affecting us just as much as the Moon.

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While an interesting study in human credulity, I generally feel belief in pseudoscience like astronomy is usually pretty harmless – I mean, if you want to fork over your hard-earned dollars for a little entertainment, that’s your business (and P. T. Barnum would thank you).  That said, there are a few times in life when critical thinking is not an option – when your ability to objectively and skeptically analyze the world around you is a serious responsibility:  That is, when your decisions affect someone else.

            So while it’s fine to enjoy astrological predictions, Ouija boards, tarot cards, and the like, it’s important to understand those concepts for what they are, especially when you vote, serve on a jury, or otherwise are called upon to act as a responsible citizen.

I can't believe people believe in this stuff.

Prove to me that claims made through astrology are true. Don't give me anecdotal evidence, don't say "I've seen it happen to this man..." whatever. There are 6 billion people in this world, of course we will see a coincidence once in a while. What I'm asking for is a measured statistical significance. People practicing pseudo-science are never able to provide this.

The thing is, people's minds are wired to see "cause & effect" even in situations where there isn't any. Some caveman a long time ago started dancing for whatever reason, then it happened to rain. Because of that, people for thousands of years afterward believed that this "rain dance" brings rain. Sometimes it does rain, in which case it enforces this false belief, and sometimes it doesn't, in which case they make up an excuse and ignore it. Every pseudo-science is just like this.

Astrology makes some testable claims. Prove that this retrograde thing has merit by researching repair records from automobile (or any other) repair facilities. What about AAA calls? Help desk calls? Do you work at a company with an IT department?  Do they keep records?

As for another testable claim, I would suggest using marriage AND divorce records to show that there is truth to the notion of compatible and incompatible signs. We may expect to see a small blip in the marriage records because I'm sure that there are some people out there who would only date (and eventually marry) people with a supposedly compatible sign. To be convincing, this needs to be an obvious effect. Because if astrology is correct, then we should see MANY MORE marriages and MANY LESS divorces amongst couples with compatible signs. Also, this effect must be seen regardless of geographical location, age, race, religion, salary, etc.

If these ideas (or any others that are predicted by astrology) have any foundation in truth, then these effects should be easy and obvious to see just about everywhere. Of course, if there was truth to any of it, I’m sure someone would have done this type of work already and we would be inundated with “see I told you so’s” from the astrological community.

Otherwise, it’s a shame that a ‘credible’ news organization is wasting time, money and space on this nonsense, especially with so much else going on these days.

i dont believe in it, but to think how small earth is in comparison to the galaxy & to think we have absolutely nothing to do with anything outside of the planet is a bit narrow-minded in my opinion

We are all just puppets on a string.  And the great invisible magician in the sky makes us dance.  Yes sir, that's right.  I prefer religion over astronomy any day.

To think that we have any effect on the rest of the universe is in my opinion being narrow minded. 

I can see both sides of this...Yes I think alot of astrologists have a desire to see something that's not there and jump at shadows in the dark, there is some merit to what they say about this retrograde. It's going to mess with gravity and EMF's but that's all. All this retrograde is, is when earth's orbit for a time overtakes mercury's. It just means we're moving faster than mercury is at the moment. It's nothing special. While yes it may have some kind of geometrical effect SOMEWHERE, it's not enough to knock out any form of communication, and to those that think about it every time we see this, sure, it's messing with things, because your looking for it this time.

People don't notice problems on a day to day basis, but when an astrological event happens, we suddenly notice everything and blame it on an Eclipes, allignment or some astral body moving in a way it's not meant to. A comet passes by and people think it's god. The northern lights appear in central america, Aliens are invading...It's always something...

Here's a tip. If your not dead, it's another fine day.