A closer look
Saint Augustine of Hippo famously destroyed the logic of astrology back in the fifth century by simply pointing out the completely different fates of a wealthy nobleman and a miserable slave who were born at the exact same moment. He argued that if the stars truly controlled human destiny, these two infants should have lived identical lives, instead of one growing up to rule an estate while the other was forced to scrub floors. This brilliantly simple observation completely shattered the deterministic worldview that planets mandate our social standing, yet humanity somehow spent the next sixteen hundred years continuing to read horoscopes anyway. Augustine recognized that blaming celestial bodies for your behavior was just a lazy way to avoid personal responsibility for your own terrible sins. Even centuries ago, brilliant philosophers were exhausted by people acting like absolute garbage and then casually blaming their toxic traits on the unfortunate position of Mars
