Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

day and night. It wasn't that difficult to observe things like the changing patterns of the stars through the year. Modern people don't give ancient people sufficient credit for what they knew through direct observation. And when you have no clue about the actual size of the Universe, what stars actually are and how far away they are, you're going to make up good stories to explain stuff.

I constantly have things happen that I know better than to explain as the willful behavior of gods, spirits, whatever. But sometimes I just don't have a rational world explanation. Here's my most recent: About four years ago I bought a 3-disc cd changer/radio. I really liked being able to put in three cds and get music for several hours. For no reason that I could determine the cd player simply stopped working about a year ago. Worse yet, the last three cds I'd put in would not eject. How annoying. I put off buying a replacement since multiple cd-changers seem to be a lost technology these days. A couple of months ago I bought a small cd/clock radio to take with me on a trip, and when I got back home with it I placed it in the living room -- where the other cd player was -- intending to start using it there. Immediately the cd player resumed working. I know because I tried once again to play the cds therein. After a week or so it went back to ejecting the old cds, and now I can play all of my music again. The only thing that hasn't spontaneously fixed itself is the ability of the player to change discs automatically. It's a nuisance, but I can live with it.

I can think of absolutely no good reason why this would happen. If I didn't have my "scientific" understanding of the world it would be very easy to assume that the player was possessed, or that the god of it was angry at me for a time, and that the threat of being replaced made it play again.

Astrology actually makes a great deal of sense given the context in which it was developped. Which is not to say a modern person should still believe in it, but to understand that it helped understand the world and laid the groundwork for modern astronomy is not so bad.