What Evidence Makes You Believe That Bigfoot Exists ?

[Guest DWA]

You keep failing to either get read up on this or understand what we're saying, so why do you keep it up?

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

DWA, you keep talking about convincing evidence so what have you got?

 

 

You've been around long enough to see the evidence for Bigfoot. Are you hoping that someone here will be able to convince you?

[Guest DWA]

^^^Yes.  He wants to be a Believer again.  Not a fun way to live.

[SWWASAS]

The only people who need to be called hoaxers are the people proven to be hoaxers.  But that does not disqualify that hoaxers are making bigfoot tracks.  You may find what you think is a bigfoot track and it may be a miss identification or you may have stumbled onto the work of a hoaxer.  Can you offer assurance to yourself that your field operations are 100% immune from the work of a hoaxer?  Are you working in deep secrecy?  Point blank Ray Wallace was a hoaxer, Rick Dyer is a hoaxer, Paul Freeman was a hoaxer, Todd Standing was a hoaxer, Ivan Marx was a hoaxer.  Do you not find it troubling that the biggest most widely publicized bigfoot events were all hoaxes?  When does "I seen some tracks, got a few strands of hair and some blurry photos and videos"  become there's nothing of true substance out there after all?  The difference between you and me is I've had enough time to intuit when a game is up.

I started to answer your post which is directed at me and probably trying to provoke me, but your post is off topic and typical of the skeptic methodoloy trying to derail any topic of discussion, so I will not answer it. A list of alleged hoaxers has nothing to do with forum members personal reasons for belief in existence. That is the topic. As the moderators have cautioned you and me, keep on topic. Additionally some of the people you mentioned are still alive and calling them "known hoaxers" could be considered slanderous.

Edited May 11, 2015 by SWWASASQUATCHPROJECT

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

Some people are in a tug-o-war of faith with themselves. Part of them wants to believe in Bigfoot while the other part of them doesn't want to accept it without good reason. There's also the type of people who religiously believe that Bigfoot exists and the type that religiously believes it doesn't. Whether their belief is correct or not isn't actually relevant here. 

 

These people need to let go of their bias and examine the evidence more closely for themselves so they can arrive to a conclusion in a proper and unbiased manner. 

[Guest Divergent1]

Consensus is pah.  At the frontiers of science, the consensus is that there's no way that independent thinker is gonna win a Nobel.  Surprise.

 

An independent thinker can win a Nobel prize if the concensus agrees his theories are well founded and/or his data is reproducable.

 

I don't look at your background to determine whether you have an informed opinion; I look at your opinion, and how you got there.  Once again:  everyone disagreeing with the proponents states assumptions as facts....and the assumptions are clearly contradicted by the evidence. Again.  I don't follow people.  I follow the work.  The proponents show me their work.  The skeptics:  nada.

 

You should, if you ask for advice for planting a garden you would ask a farmer, not a pharmacist.

 

"Thinking that there is an increased probability of bigfoot existing due to the sheer volume of reports isn't really justifiable. Why? Because there is no way to repeat the experience with any rigor."

 

Wrong way to think about stuff like this.  It's not "the sheer volume of reports" that the intelligent independent thinkers are looking at.  It is the amazing - for something that isn't real, that is, but perfectly predictable for something that is - CONSISTENCY of those reports.  On points which, count on it, the people having the experiences don't have the expertise to make up, the time in their busy lives to research so they can fake it, nor the thick skin to put up with the ridicule.  They're only doing this because they had experiences that, simply reading them, one knows full well add up to nothing now acknowledged by science.  Assumptions?  Yep, there's one or two in there, but in the face of the evidence, perfectly safe ones, because they describe how people are.  Before saying "people are doing this" one only needs to ask oneself:  would you?  Would anyone you know?  Would anyone they know?

 

With so many shows about Bigfoot, do you really think there 's any validity to the consistency of reports?

 

See, the experience is being repeated with meticulous rigor:  people are seeing and describing the same animal, in terms only a specialist would relate, over and over and over and over again.  They aren't describing "a bighairyapeman;" they are saying what they saw:  prognathous jaw; nonhuman limb proportions; a hand and foot and gait broadly similar to but subtly yet distinctly different from ours; no apparent neck; sagittal crest; primate intimidation behaviors and curiosity; etc.  But you gotta read 'em to know this.

 

Because they saw it on Monster Quest, Finding Bigfoot, Destinatination Truth, etc....

 

Bigfoot skeptics make three fatal errors not allowed in science:  (1) they assume the exceptional as the commonplace; (2) they build an entire case on nothing but assumptions mainly stemming from (1); and (3) they refuse to review the evidence because they fail to understand what evidence is. For example, as you did, they make blanket statements about the reports impossible to make for someone who has made a study of them.

 

Your assumptions for skepticism are incorrect:

 

1.) Skepticism assumes that the commonplace is the most likely answer.

2.) It's common to back up an assumption or point with research, most using the skeptical approach do this because it relates back to the concept of concensus.

3.)  True skepticism requires review of the evidence available. There are differenct types of evidence;  circumstantial, soft, and hard evidence. You can't build a case on circumstantial or soft evidence alone in any arena.

 

I think you left out some verbs or nouns in the last sentence that I  italicized above so I won't be able to address it since I can't assume what you mean.

 

People aren't doing this.  An unclassified animal is; and the evidence is very clear on that point.  To anyone who makes a study of it.

 

There might be a bigfoot roaming the USA but the best I can come up with based on a report is " I don't know".

[Guest Crowlogic]

Contrary to what some are saying I have no desire to be a believer again.  The one and only thing to sway my position would be the proverbial body on the slab.   The books and media events are mostly a rehashing of old news or additions to the usual mediocre evidence at large.  

 

Since  inquisitions about better or exceptional evidence goes nowhere it can be assumed that the evidence proponents are basing their belief on is essentially the same evidence that skeptics reject.  

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

Contrary to what some are saying I have no desire to be a believer again.  The one and only thing to sway my position would be the proverbial body on the slab.

 

Your honesty deserves praise. 

[Guest Divergent1]

Since  inquisitions about better or exceptional evidence goes nowhere it can be assumed that the evidence proponents are basing their belief on is essentially the same evidence that skeptics reject.  

I don't think reject is the right word to use. I don't reject prints right out of the ball park, I look at the circumstances surrounding them like where were they found, who found them, etc......I can't say a bigfoot made the prints until an actual bigfoot's foot can be used to compare but some peak my interest more than others. It's the same with reports. I'ld be more likely to pay attention to older reports before bigfoot became so mainstream but in either case I'm still left with " I don't know".

[Patterson-Gimlin]

Contrary to what some are saying I have no desire to be a believer again.  The one and only thing to sway my position would be the proverbial body on the slab.   The books and media events are mostly a rehashing of old news or additions to the usual mediocre evidence at large.  

 

Since  inquisitions about better or exceptional evidence goes nowhere it can be assumed that the evidence proponents are basing their belief on is essentially the same evidence that skeptics reject.  

I am surprised you were ever a believer. I never really ever have been. No reason to other than the  Patterson film. Flimsy evidence and treasure trove full of hoaxes which you have explained quite well.

[BigTreeWalker]

Thanks for the encouragement Divergent1. I am still in the I don't know category, I guess that also makes me skeptical of some claims. We have taken hard physical evidence and made comparisons through our research of known causes and so far finding no possible matches leads us to the unknown cause category. Since we do have hard, soft, and anecdotal evidence of an organism that is a possible fit, though still unsubstantiated, it is only logical to consider the possibility. Until more supporting evidence comes to light, that is currently where I stand in my conclusions.

Unless of course I have a personal sighting. With my biology background, I am not one to make a mistaken identification of an animal.

[Guest Divergent1]

Yes, a personal experience would certainly change my perspective dramatically. Like you, I wouldn't mistake bigfoot for anything else.

[Guest Crowlogic]

I am surprised you were ever a believer. I never really ever have been. No reason to other than the  Patterson film. Flimsy evidence and treasure trove full of hoaxes which you have explained quite well.

If a person came onto bigfoot in the 1960's with the Minnesota Iceman and the PGF  belief was not all that difficult.  The very same belief mechanisms were in play then as they are today and in some cases were even stronger.  The entire thing can be credited to the Yeti reports in the 50's.  Prior to that there was no organized or sustained interest in bigfoot in America only isolated events of wildmen with local searches that invariably came up empty handed.  

 

Personally I lived in a somewhat rural area at the time and that helped me to understand what real vastness is and what true wilderness is, none of which could describe the pastoral region I lived in as nice as that region was at the time.  But it was very easy to think of the great "out there" and by out there I mean the forests of the PNW and Canada.  There were 100,000,000 less people in the country then and 400,000,000 less cameras and recorders as well.  4 wheelers didn't exist outside of the military and certainly high technology extreme vision conditions hardware hadn't been invented yet either.  There was no internet and by default no flood of information.  

 

Early on bigfoot books got written and articles appeared and it all fit nicely in the "out there" I refer to.  Out there was vast, untrammeled and inaccessible mostly.  All of this made the possibility of the beast plausible.  Basically the cornerstones of belief was based on the vastness of certain regions, relic animals were occasionally found to still exist, human reportage, certain historical implications, the Iceman and the PGF.  In a way that wasn't a bad collection to pin belief on for a decade or so for surely progress would continue to be made.I didn't give bigfoot much thought for a very long time except when the occasional TV show or series hit the networks.  Those shows in retrospect were mostly a rehashing of old events but the "out there" factor was still a strong reason to accept them with a sense of fact.

 

Enter the information age.  Around 2005 the idea to explore the current state of bigfoot progress came to me.  Of course the old classics still stood as cornerstones but I was leery when I learned that bigfoot had become almost a 50 state proposition.  I remembered the old shows the their where it was stated how a small population of animals could exist unknown in certain vast areas such as the PNW.  Those shows were careful to keep it in the "out there" where it could make logical sense.   So now bigfoot was everywhere, somehow it had remained secret for a century in some places like Pennsylvania, Virgina etc.  This made no sense to me and I'm certain that in 1968 if someone told John Green they saw bigfoot in Connecticut he would have politely dismissed it as I'm sure the other early proponents would have as well.

 

Enter the graphic evidence.  I was mindful of how the PGF was filmed and the monumental rareness of it's filming (assuming it was real).  I was equally mindful that cameras had become ubiquitous devices as cell phone add ins and dedicated devices.  I own more than one digital camera and in the course of a couple of years have taken more digital photos than all of the 35mm photos I took in the previous decades.  That pretty much is the case with everyone now too.  So it seemed that the big game changer would come in the form of video and photos but it didn't.  The photos and videos came for sure but right down to the most recently published photos a PGF hadn't been taken.  

 

Enter the hard evidence.  The possibility of hair and tissue samples seemed still a good possibility until I began reading about laboratories losing samples, samples being stolen, samples never being returned to the submitter etc..  It all reeked of the old dog ate my homework routine.  Then there was the big modern examples of tissue analysis which everyone here knows how that turned out.  After that I stepped back and took a long hard look at where bigfoot progress had traveled and realized that it hadn't traveled at all.  It had grown in culture it had grown in geography but it had not advanced it had only grown more clever in how it was being portrayed and administered.

 

After adding it all up none of it added up.  There was still no body in spite of the supposed increase in the range of these things, there was still no convincing photo/video evidence of it, and there was still no convincing lab analysis.  There was however the expected increase of known hoaxing and abysmally poor graphic evidence from all quarters of where it has spread.  In a way the believer has to dismiss the entirety of modern graphics and stories since the quality is bemoaned even by proponents.  In other words Youtube is all junk.  So where does that leave it?  I leaves it to the "out there" where it's always been.  Except "out there" no longer exists it is too accessible it is too record-able it is now only a place in the mind.  I did my homework and at the end of the day I did the only thing the evidence allowed me to do and that was walk away.

[Patterson-Gimlin]

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. I appreciate it.

[WSA]

Crowlogic...I see this a lot, so don't feel like you are alone. What I'm talking about is the confusion between "technology" (and especially the "data" it brings with it) with "knowledge", or "understanding"   Fact is, as far as I can tell, knowledge and understanding are moving in opposition to these, they have for some time now, and they show no signs of reversing course.  To believe otherwise is just techno-narcissism in my book.  Consider that the world has not changed fundamentally (and included BF in that)  only your ideas about what our assorted gadgetry should extract from it. Otherwise, you are prone to come up with rash and confused judgments about how BF's went extinct because nobody has grabbed a photo of one with a crappy iphone camera in between tweets to his FB friends. (And, uh, as far as I can tell, they might have anyway)