For:

There is a lot to say against the idea of astrology, which is fair. Dating back thousands of years, from different cultures to different interpretations, astrology is a hard pill to swallow. The idea that how the stars aligned made you into who you isn’t something that is easily believable. But there’s a reason why it’s stayed around for so long. There’s more to astrology than meets the eye. Yes, on Twitter and Tumblr, astrology is boiled down to the most basic, stereotypical idea of the star sign, but it’s more than a stereotype.

Most people discredit astrology on the basis of those several oversimplified Twitter and Tumblr posts. As a supporter of astrology, I’ll admit it, most of those posts are full of it. But there is a reason why scholars of the past believed. Astrology is all the little pieces that make up the whole personality. Understanding who you are as a person isn’t understanding how you present yourself to the world (sun sign) but also how you feel about things (moon sign) and how every other little thing all adds up to who you are as a person.                

Sure it’s easy to say that this is all fake, but people have looked to weirder things to explain themselves. Astrology is hard to understand and hard to explain, but in simplified terms, when a person is born, the way the stars align makeup your natal chart. Within this natal chart, the time and place you were born all have an impact on who you are. The idea is that the stars are aligned in just a way that it will tell how you will be as a person. In a way, it’s saying that you can be the only you because the stars aligned just so, and I believe in that.

Against:

Though astrology once stemmed from academic and scholarly circles, its current interpretation and trending status has watered down what little relevance or meaning it may have had left, and modern science proves it.

The mere suggestion that star and planet alignment has any weight in interpreting one’s personality has little scientific weight, as proved by numerous scientists and philosophers over the last several centuries. Those extremely — and purposefully — vague horoscopes that Twitter users are so fond of are not a new concept: they can be found in astrological literature, whose poor reasoning and fallacies philosopher Edward W. James suggested made the whole concept irrational.

Even though astrology has been warped by young social media users, the study of sun, moon, star and planets and their effect on human lives has long been full of theoretical inaccuracies, producing skeptics for years. Ever since the pseudoscience became a popular staple in newspapers in the early 1900s, astrology’s popularity has sparked it to be the subject of many experiments. The overwhelming consensus? The stars have no real influence or impact on individuals. In 2003, even former astrologer Dr. Geoffrey Dean, who once was a dedicated believer in the stars, ruled after studying 2000 individuals born within minutes of each other on the same day in multiple decades, that they shared little similarities in personality.

Like the concept of fate, astrology, though a beautiful idea, lacks logic and substance. Our story is not written in the stars or determined by some higher power of cosmic alignment. Any vague coincidences are exactly that: coincidental. Even though the stars and birthdays govern how some people live their lives, I’d stick with science and reason over astrology.