First off -- all the posts here about "stars predicting or controlling our destiny" are working under a misunderstanding of what astrology is all
about. Really, astrology is just about "keeping time", like a clock or stop watch. Astrology is about finding relationships and patterns in a
sequence of events over time, by looking at one particular and well known sequence of events (the movement of planets.)
If you can prove that there is predestination then you can probably prove that all forms of divination (including astrology) are workable. If you can
believe that predestination is REAL, then it is not a big jump to believe that you can map one pattern on to another pattern through some standard
(but probably highly complicated) technique.
And BTW -- there probably IS some concept of "predestination", given the fact that the past is immutable.
Given all that (a big chunk to believe in for sure) here would be a better objective test (IMO) that I would like to see:
1. Select a significant event in history and tell a pool of non-astrologers WHAT THE EVENT IS.
2. Have this pool of people rationalize the event using a series of well-defined terms (which happen to correspond to astrological concepts, such as
fire, earth, air, water, cardinal, fixed, mutable) -- a fairly complete list is here:
www.astrologycom.com...
3. Have a group of astrologers select the best rationalization for the event. They only see the rationalization -- they do not know the name of the
person.
4. See if there is any consistency on which people experienced astrologers select as "the best", or if astrologers just select people at random from
the pool of strangers.
SO -- that would indicate whether there is any ability (by group consensus) for astrologers to map star patterns to significant events in time.
That would be a nice first step. If experienced astrologers aligned behind one or several explanation of what caused something to happen (in
astrological terms) then that would go a long way of demonstrating that some pattern exists in history. If astrologers just select the "evaluations"
at random -- no consistent "best rationalization", then I guess astrology is stupid and doesn't work.