Making sense of nonsense

There is a lot to be said for knowing that you have a divine guru or someone looking over you and all that’s necessary is acknowledging that incredible presence and its good intention. Of course, you have to pay homage, give alms and do good works but the prize is eternal life and the possibility of a better one in death than the one experienced on Earth.

For sure, belief will be tested along the way – Why me, God? Why an innocent child, God? How he could let that happen? What I do so bad to deserve this, God? Etc, etc.

Then there is the human frailness of the conduits between us and the higher power: the paedophile clerics whom the various Churches protect from public detection to safeguard the institution (like banks that conceal fraud to maintain customer confidence); the racism and ignorance of the clergy (I once had the holy communion withheld at the altar of a Cistercian monastery in the South of France when the blue eyes of the monk looked up to meet my dark eyes in a brown face and saw before him a Muslim infidel); the politician in religious garb whose nature is given to the relentless pursuit of power; the religious leaders who encourage the faithful to kill and maim in defence of God’s honour and win martyrdom.

In spite of all of that and much more, the believers remain true. The proof of God’s existence, his wisdom and bountifulness is irrefutable in their eyes. And what right has anybody to deny them that?

The same goes for believing in the stars. There is something comforting in allowing yourself, against your better judgment perhaps, to believe that the location of the sun on the day you popped out of your watery world and into the earthly sphere determines your intrinsic character. “I couldn’t help it,” “it was bound to happen,” “that’s my destiny.” It doesn’t matter that you know about free will and that astrology, like God’s existence, is not based in science, nor how many times one newspaper’s daily astrological guide tells something completely different from another publication’s.

Some forlorn scientists in Denmark have been trying recently to gather enough data to prove to the astrology faithful that the sun cares not one jot about when human beings are born. In one of the largest-ever studies of this kind, they took 4000 men from whom they collected information on four different personality measurements, intelligence scores, and dates of birth. From another 11,000 they got data on a different set of personality measures and months of birth. Then they ran a series of statistical analyses to glean if any of the individual personality measurements or intelligence ratings were related to the date of birth or astrological sun sign. The answer on each count was a resounding no.

They didn’t measure whether the position of the planets affected personality but reasoned that if there was any truth in astrology “then some general effects of prominent astrological factors like sun signs should be detectable using large enough samples.”

Well, that is all very logical but much too rational in trying to test a totally irrational concept dating back thousands of years. Of course, astrologers responded by pointing out that human nature is far too complex to be treated so clinically and that the research could not equate that complexity. They gave it the thumbs down.

Reading my horoscope on a day that promises achievement, romance, a windfall, or the start of a new phase of contentment puts me in an optimistic and light-hearted mood. Why not? It’s as heartening as beholding our still densely covered, beautiful blue-green mountains, hearing the song birds calling me to rise, seeing the wondrous dawn, watching the sun’s yellow turn to butter in the evening sky, or hearing the sound of soft rain falling.

And it’s a lot better than trying to understand what on Earth is going on in the Middle East, in Mumbai, or with our CJ, the Police and the Judiciary. I used to think that as one got older things would become clearer and easier to manage but now I know that is as elusive as the proof of any divinity or influencing star. I say a bit of escapism is what we all need. It makes a whole lot more sense.