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Member (Idle past 2523 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Bigfoot | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nuggin Member (Idle past 2523 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
Though I want this to be scientific in nature, coffee house is probably a better place for this thread.
I'm a Bigfoot fan. I admit that up front. I believe there is a large bipedal primate living in (among other places) the American NW. With evidence from sightings to oral traditions to footprint casts to hair samples - there's a strong indication that something is out there. I just watched a "documentary" on Discovery which talked about "both sides" of the issue and found the arguments being posed by the skeptics to be seriously lacking. Here's some examples:- Bigfoot couldn't survive the winters in the Pac NW because there isn't enough food out there to sustain the needs of a big brained primate. - Bigfoot could not be noturnal because it would need to be able to see colors in order distinguish it's food (apparently only plants) from other plants - If Bigfoot is an ape there should be "ape nests" like those created by gorillas And on and on... Most of the arguments were good arguments for why there are not gorillas in the Pacific NW, but that's not really a valid way to disprove a different species. Other arguments were great for proving why no member of the primate family could survive in the Pac NW, which, if you told this to the Native Americans of the area, I would expect a lot of head scratching. Is there anyone here at EVC who is particularly ANTI-Bigfoot who'll try to raise at least a better line of reasoning for why this thing can't exist. I know - I'm basically asking you to prove a negative - this isn't meant to be a "Debate" as much as a discussion about why some evidence is acceptable and other evidence isn't, or why some reasoning simply doesn't apply.
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AdminPhat Inactive Member |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
They found/discovered Mountain Lions in southern Missouri not too long ago. People had reported seeing them but the skeptics were saying their same old stuff, until it was confirmed.
The point is that large mammals could live in an area and remain fairly undetected. I'd leave the possibility of Bigfoot existing open.
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2523 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
Yeah, similiarly, I'm sure there were plenty of people making the argument that there is no way there could be a large bear living in a bamboo forest, and even if there was, there is no way it would be black and white.
There are populations of deer and coyotes living in many many urban centers and people have no clue. If you think about it, how many times have you crossed over that bridge near your house? How many times have you climbed down to see what's under it. It's extremely easy to pass by little pockets of nature without a second glance. You never know what's hiding in the shadows.
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subbie Member (Idle past 1285 days) Posts: 3509 Joined: |
a discussion about why some evidence is acceptable and other evidence isn't, or why some reasoning simply doesn't apply. Well, let's start with, "What evidence is there?" This seems to me to be more fruitful than an abstract discussion of what types of evidence are worth how much, who to believe, who not to believe, etc. I'll confess to very little knowledge of bigfoot claims, other than the grainy clips that I suppose everyone has seen that have been discredited. What else do you have? Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2523 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
Okay, short of time, so I'm going give the evidence a quick fly by and will come back to do more later.
Accounts -Take them for what they are worth, there have been literally thousands of eye-witness accounts. I'm sure some (even many) may be completely fictional. Others may be just simply in error about what they saw (ie it was a bear). But there are quite a few which are credible. Film / Photos -Here there are many many fakes, unfortunately. Including the most famous footage - the Patterson Film. Physical Evidence -Mostly plaster casts of footprints, and again, here we find a number of fakes as well. But there are quite a few which, at the very least, would be hard to fake, for example a few left in very fine silt actually show skin texture. Additionally there are hair samples attributed to a yet unknown primate. These never seem to get addressed in the TV specials. Oral history -For what it's worth, the Native American tribes of the area have oral histories which reference these creatures. Sure, the Greeks have Minotaurs in their oral history, but you don't have hundreds of sightings a year of Minotaurs
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 447 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
You believe in God?
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
The first question is how do we know any of the evidence is valid. We know that eyewitness accounts, at their very best, are of marginal value.
Perhaps all the photos/films are fake? I've never seen really good one fake or not. Do you have a place to look at any? I've never seen anything about the detailed cast. Do you have reference? The only reference I've ever seen to a hair sample was one shown to be a bear. Do you have details? Oral histories are worth even less than a current eye witness account. In all this suggests that there is, in fact, very little evidence and maybe no hard evidence at all. What is there?
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2523 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
You believe in God? Wander into the wrong thread River?
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2523 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
We know that eyewitness accounts, at their very best, are of marginal value. I agree, eyewitness accounts are as much about what the witnesser wishes to see as it is what is actually there. And, for the most part, I discount 90% of these accounts. But there are accounts which are not so easy to discount. Accounts of rational people who had ample opertunity to observe carefully what it was that they saw.
I've never seen really good one fake or not Frankly, in the case of photos I generally feel that the better the photo the more likely it was faked. The most "real" footage I ever saw was taken by a pair of teens. In the audio track on the footage you can hear that they are freaking the hell out. However, I still can't make out what they think they are seeing in the footage. Underbrush + poor lighting + a cheap camera = not much to go on. However, unlike a lot of other clips, this one certainly doesn't "feel" fake the way that others so clearly do.
Oral histories are worth even less than a current eye witness account. I disagree. While, clearly, the specifics of any given oral history are completely subject to change, the fact that they exist up and down the coast is a pretty good indiciator that there was something driving this belief system. While I'm not suscribing this with the same sort of weight the Creos give "cultures all over the world have flood myths therefore the Flood really happened", I am saying that belief in this creature certainly predates European influence in the area.
maybe no hard evidence at all. Well some would say the only acceptable hard evidence is a dead bigfoot. And, yes, that would be the "best" evidence (short of a captured live one). But I'll point out that pandas and mountain gorillas were both only known by eyewitness accounts and local legend long before a specimen was produced. In fact the "experts" of the day were saying many of the same things we hear about Bigfoot. Anyway, as for references on some of the other stuff, I'll get some good ones. Unfortunately it's 2am here and I don't want to blind link a bunch of crypto sites. I'll go and cherry pick the stuff I find more reasonable.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
he most "real" footage I ever saw was taken by a pair of teens. I'm pretty sure I saw that one recently. The teens certainly were excited. The image is pretty dreadful but it screams "bear". If this is what you think is evidence then I guess that explains your interest in bigfoot. Pandas and mountain Gorillas were discovered over a century ago. The world has changed rather a lot you know. It feels like you're clutching at straws. You've decided you like the idea of these things (I do too.) and you're looking for a way to justtify it. Oral "histories" are loaded with all sorts of things. Selecting the ones that you like and thinking they are evidence is a form (I think) of confirmation bias.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
quote: Mitch Hedburg writes: I think that the problem is that Bigfoot IS blurry....and that's extra scary to me.
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 447 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
Wander into the wrong thread River? I must have made a wrong turn at Alberkerky..... I was just curious how you could believe in bigfoot, with the lack of objective evidence, yet not believe in God. (if you don't)
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1498 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Is there anyone here at EVC who is particularly ANTI-Bigfoot who'll try to raise at least a better line of reasoning for why this thing can't exist. If there's a sustainable population of Bigfoots in the Pacific NW, it would be large enough that we should see Bigfoot carcasses by the side of the road. A population small enough to hide from Homo sapiens is way too small to be sustainable. There's no fossil record of primates that far north. If there's a sustainable population of Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) what did they evolve from? Why do all the supposed pictures look like guys in gorilla suits? Why don't we find primitive tools or shelters?
Other arguments were great for proving why no member of the primate family could survive in the Pac NW, which, if you told this to the Native Americans of the area, I would expect a lot of head scratching. The Native Americans used tools - a lot of them - to survive in those climes; as I recall they were predominantly fisher cultures. As a result the area is littered with bone fishhooks and the like. Where are all the Bigfoot tools? You're talking about a large population of enormous primates - with enormous calorie requirements - living in a biome that can't supply those calories just by grazing, but somehow manages to escape thousands of people trying to find just one without leaving any tools or constructions behind. There's an astounding lack of evidence for Bigfoot, and absence of evidence is evidence of absence. I wouldn't say that I'm particularly "anti-Bigfoot", but I'm anti-nonsense, and this pretty much seems like nonsense. And you should know better than to start a thread by asking your opponents to disprove something. If you have evidence of Bigfoot, let's see what it is. We can immediately discount "oral traditions" and "sightings".
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1498 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I'm curious why you think this rebuttal can be simply dismissed:
Bigfoot couldn't survive the winters in the Pac NW because there isn't enough food out there to sustain the needs of a big brained primate. The biggest arboreal mammals can only survive the winters by hibernating; is this what you're suggesting the Bigfoots do? Or are you referring again to the fishing peoples of the Pacific NW, who were able to survive the winters by preserving salmon in their smokehouses? If Bigfoot is running a chain of redwood-forest smokehouses (yum), that would seem to make him easier to detect.
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