Bigfoot Research--Still No Evidence (Continued)

[Guest LarryP]

I don't see skeptics as some sort of enemy, someone threatening to destroy what I hold dear in my heart, so I don't generally mice words about what is and what isn't a true skeptic. I think that those most often considered scoftics, and actually not even that, those that most proponents simply refer to as skeptics (as a dirty word) only appear to be the big bad meanies because they are pretty well satisfied and convinced that the "evidence" and lack of evidence shows conclusively that bigfoot does not exist, and so why bother tap dancing around that opinion and wander into a fantasyland that they don't particularly want to go into.

I've covered this before, but I'm assuming you missed it.

A pseudo-skeptic always assumes that the negative claim is somehow more priviledged than the positive claim.

Which it is not.

Then to make that even more ridiculous, they demand that the person making the positive claim brings them "proof" of the positive claim, while defining exactly what the pseudo-skeptic will consider as proof ahead of time.

This is inevitably also accompanied by pejorative statements like "fantasyland" or "mermaids".

Which is then promulgated by other small-minded, belligerant pseudo "skeptics" who collectively attempt to intimidate with the same bullying tactics used by the likes of James Randi and the CSICOP crowd.

It is nothing more than intellectual dishonesty.

Here we go again. Misinterpreting what skeptics think. I've seen some pretty hard core skeptics voice their opinions on things, and I have never gotten the idea that they were somehow afraid or as you put it, "terrified" that bigfoot would tear apart their rigid and limited world view. I fully believe that this kind of statement represents being completely out of touch with skeptical minded people.

They're absolutely terrified of the unknown. These people have the exact same materialist mindset as the people who refused to look through Galileo's telescope while simultaneously denouncing his claims.

So they band together as so called "hard core skeptics" in order to constantly reassure themselves of their narrow minded materialist worldviews in order to maintain a collective security blanket.

[Guest DWA]

As I understand this:

The proponents are being told to produce proof. Now. That they are on their way to doing it - and closer than most people realize - doesn't matter. PROOF. NOW! PROOF. NOW!

Meanwhile, the people doing the demanding are holding up as The Solution a thesis that no sane person would bet, were that person walked through what would be required for it to be true.

Prove that silly thesis. NOW.

Unlike the proponents, the bigfoot skeptics haven't even started yet.

Which is why I say I come here to educate. There is nothing, really, to argue about. The evidence says North American biology has majorly missed something. Why would anyone want to protect them from the truth? Isn't sussing stuff like this their job? That they get paid to do?

I have never had a bigfoot skeptic explain, I mean fully explain, their stance to me.

Isn't this something we all want to know?

Then why are so many people seemingly determined that we never know it?

If one thinks one's thesis is correct, would not one want that confirmed? If one didn't care, would not one want to go do other things, rather than come back here and back here and back here, over and over, peddling a thesis for which no backup exists? Honestly. Crittergetter is interested too.

Help us with this.

[Guest DWA]

That sounds great an all there DWA, except you have made up your mind already. You have made that painfully clear. You allow for zero possibility that a pursuit of the evidence will not lead to a Sasquatch. ZERO. If I am wrong, please correct me. While you are at it, it would be great if you could hazard a guess as to what is causing the evidence if not a Sasquatch. But you will never do that because your mind is not open on this topic at all. You just want people to think that it is. If it was open even a crack, you would have no problem saying , sure there is a chance, not a great one, but a chance that all this evidence is caused by something other than Bigfoot. Anyone who claims to be open minded on this topic would do that. But you won't. Show me wrong, that would be great.

I don't care which scientists pass your muster and which ones you adore. Means squat to me because your allegiance is as predictable as gravity. Pro-Squatch, you love em. Anyone else, hack.

OK, well, every word you're writing is wrong, and this has been pointed out to you with much more patience than the real world requires, many times, but you're allowed to live where you want.

YOU ARE THE ONE WHO HAS MADE THE DECISION. YOU ARE THE ONE WHOSE MIND IS MADE UP AND WON'T LISTEN TO DISSENTERS. I WANT TO FIND OUT WHAT IS CAUSING THIS, AND I HAVE A WAY TO DO IT, AND YOU HAVE ADMITTED YOU DO NOT.

When a scientist is a hack on this topic I point out why. But evidence never was a friend to the bigfoot skeptic.

You have said here, more than once, that your stance is one for which you have no evidence, that it is a belief.

Mine isn't a belief. It is based on the most and the most consistent evidence ever compiled for anything that remains unproven.

If you can't understand that, and can't understand that you got the closed mind here, then my work is at long last done. I mean, I've done what I can.

You once told me you'd like to get me on the Tar Pit so you could tell me what you thought of me. Isn't it interesting that I've never said that, and don't need to go there?

That's the difference between one who knows evidence is on his side, and one who just wants to rant about something he can't back up, for reasons I may get some decade.

Bindernagel. Get through the Foreword yet?

Edited April 5, 2013 by DWA

[dmaker]

^^ LarryP, I don't know if your above comment is aimed at me or not. I haven't given skepticism as a dogma or discipline much thought. I am not a practicing skeptic. In fact I hardly ever used the work outside of the everyday usage which basically translates to doubtful before I came here. I don't habituate the JREF forums nor do I have an overarching philosophy that I apply to life. I am not terrified of the unknown. I embrace the fantastical. You ought to see my bookshelf some day as well as my comic book collection that started when I was 12 and is still growing today. I do not, in any way, abhor mental flights of fancy. So I am probably not the person you had in mind when you wrote that. Maybe I am, who know.

Having said that I find myself labelled skeptic here simply because I do not think the evidence is as compelling as others and have very little ( almost zero ) faith that Bigfoot actually exists. There is a long list of reasons for that, but I'll spare the textberg and not repeat them right now. I never chose the skeptic moniker for myself. You get wrapped in that flag the moment you express serious doubt in the existence of Bigfoot. Call me something else, I really don't care. I didn't pick it, so I could not care less. Call me nonbleever, call me a big meanie, I don't really care. It seems the community has decided to call anyone who thinks Bigfoot is a crock, a skeptic. But don't assume that anyone who is labelled as such fully embraces, or even understands, that label. I know I certainly don't.

[Guest DWA]

Here is my standard for the biological sciences:

http://www.skyandtel...-201456101.html

47 million light-years away, and they're spinning a tale of predatory stars.

Backed by evidence.

Meanwhile, down here, we got the biggest primate on the planet running around, and maybe some others too, and here the scientists are, sitting on hands that are glued to their seats.

This is why astronomy is cool, and biology is 19th-century.

Maybe we should just give this to paleontology, or paleoanthropology. At least those guys have some imagination.

I honestly don't know how Meldrum could keep it up, were it not that his vision makes his life a lot more fun, I bet.

(And yes, imagination basically is the engine of science. It is why science happened in the first place. The fuddy-duddies hijacked the plane. They didn't build it.)

[dmaker]

Ah DWA, good morning my fried. Always nice to start the day with a message from you. Just to clear something up right away: I invited you to the Tar Pit not so I could curse and swear at you, but more so I could comment on your posting style that you adopt on occasion that is, let's say, less than comprehensible. I am sure you know what I mean. When you start talking to yourself and producing sentences that look like you used a random word generator. They get frustrating to read.

You can say all the words you want, it doesn't change the fact that you are even more closed minded than I am on this topic. It's some grand, cosmic coincedence that you think any scientist who doesn't buy into the Bigfoot myth is a genuine hack? Give me a break. You honestly expect people to believe that? The stench of bias there is so strong I can smell it through my monitor all the way up here in Canada.

My stance is not one without evidence, as I have pointed out many, many times. Shall I list every documented Bigfoot hoax? Every faked print? Every hair that came back as bear-dog-pig-rug? Shall I list every single scientific study that clinically shows the unreliability of memory recall? The studies that show people see things around them that are not there? There is more evidence to support the claim that Bigfoot is not real than there is real evidence of Bigfoot. In fact, there is not one single piece of tangible, uncontested Bigfoot evidence. And you tell me I have no evidence. The point you cling to ALL the time is that the competing claim to your claim includes the notion that witnesses are lying or mistaken. So you say I must prove every single one of those reports to be either lying or mistaken. You might as well tell me to walk to the moon because it is not possible. And you use that charge and that fact to create these giant smoke bombs that you think completely negate the competing hypothesis. But that is not the case. No one can go back in time and prove someone hallucinated, or lied. Just like YOU cannot go back in time and prove someone saw a Bigfoot. So the larger picture remains constant and the same in both claims: the existence of Bigfoot. Not the veracity of each and every single report. That is just smoke and mirrors. If you could just prove the existence of one single Bigfoot, I would happily concede that all of the reports and evidence is true. Happily and immediately whilst eating my crow sandwhich. So until that happens, I will not ask you to do the impossible because it doesn't matter really. All that matters is that you ( proponents) follow the evidence (whether is is real or not) to a Sasquatch. How's that coming along for you so far?

Now maybe you do a have a time machine that I don't know about. Let's print out that BFRO database, hop in that sucker and travel back in time to investigate every report. My task, prove they were lying or hallucinating. Your task, prove they saw a Bigfoot. How do you think that will work out? Do you think either of us will succeed? What you task me with is as ridiculous as your claims' tasks. Neither one of us can do that. But you CAN prove the existence of Bigfoot, you just haven't done it yet.

Edited April 5, 2013 by dmaker

[Guest DWA]

Yup. And that's where we differ.

Open mind is: follow the evidence where it's pointing; where scientists say it's pointing and those scientists who seem to disagree with them can't assemble a ghost of a case.

Closed mind is: don't follow that 'cause it ain't real. Why? Just ain't.

Oh. How's it coming along for me so far? Fantastic. I know they're out there and that I may see one some day. You oughta try that.

Oh. And I can't help it that talking to myself just sometimes feels like the smartest conversation I can have on this topic.

I agree with this. And the more I interact in the photo/video section with blobsquatches the more I am convinced that this is what it happening. Each piece of photo/video evidence over there always has a few folks (usually the same people) who swear they can see the subject with great clarity. We are all looking at the same thing, and a brown spot or a shadow does not a BF make. In fact claiming so does a huge dis-service to those who perhaps have real experiences and certainly does not help bigfootery in the larger sense.

Can't disagree. Wishing don't make something so. Patty is one thing. If you don't have Patty or clearer, either

(1) you need to fill out a comprehensive encounter report in which the object makes sense as something anomalous that tends to give your story credence, and approximates what you saw; or

(2) nice souvenir, but thanks, we don't need one.

[dmaker]

Ok, couple of follow up questions/comments: How can you KNOW they are there without having seen one? Seriously? I'm not being sarcastic. Yet you will say that you have not reached a conclusion. Uhm, that sure sounds like one.

I don't say don't follow the evidence. I say follow it all the time. I just happen to think it will not get you where you're going. But now I realize that does not matter, because in your head you have already arrived.

[Guest DWA]

If you insist on taking 'know' literally, sure. What I mean is: evidence says it's real. So what, I'm gonna go around thinking it's not? Why not be open to the possibility? Might as well say 'know', right?

[dmaker]

Let me fix this for you:

" Open mind is: follow the evidence where it's pointing; where scientists say it's pointing" ..while allowing for the possibility that the evidence might not actually support the claim in the long run. That we COULD be wrong about this and that something else must be making the evidence.

See that is open, you are not.

No. Know is not open to interpretation. A better choice would be "think".

The evidence suggests that it is real, it does not confirm or say anything yet.

[Guest DWA]

And by the same token, that any alternative way the evidence is pointing than an unlisted animal, well, doesn't exist because no alternative thesis has evidence backing it up is not open to interpretation either.

(I've gone over and over why hoaxes have zero impact on this discussion.)

So we should be investigating the possibility of that animal, and letting the alternatives into the discussion only if we start encountering evidence they may be the case (don't hold your breath).

Glad we could clear that up.

Not even the most open mind goes in any direction other than that pointed by the evidence.

[dmaker]

How do hoaxes not enter into it? The alternative to your theory involves hoaxes. So you can't just wave them away. And we have been encountering evidence for hoaxes since the beginning of Footery. What do you mean once we START encountering them? They have been there since day one. Just because you think that you have weeded out all the fakes, and mis-ids from your pile of evidence does not make that true. And in fact, there are cases where that has been the case. Evidence has been exhalted and oohed and ahhhed over only to, later, be debunked. So you don't get to call your body of evidence pristine and hoax free and therefore hoaxes have nothing to do with this because it suits your case. You can't tailor the facts and reality to your whim so that your position does not have to consider things it doesn't like.

[Guest LarryP]

It was directed at the "James Randi" and "CSICOP crowd", dmaker, not anyone here in particular.

Call me nonbleever, call me a big meanie, I don't really care. It seems the community has decided to call anyone who thinks Bigfoot is a crock, a skeptic.

First of all, I am not a member of a "community".

Secondly, I have no issues with true Skeptics who are doubters, as opposed to absolutists.

As to anyone acting like a "big meanie", I could care less.

That's because years ago I came to this realization:

"Self-importance is man's greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men. Self-importance requires that one spend most of one's life offended by something or someone."

-Don Juan Matus

I don't "hate" anyone. Because to do so creates an attachment to the object of your hatred and becomes an emotional addiction.

To me it's very simple, because I know what I have seen and experienced and I am very thankful for it.

If I wanted to I could choose to feel insulted by people who tell me that I did not see and experience what I did see and experience because it's "impossible".

But that would require that I feel offended in the first place.

With that being said, not feeling offended does not preclude me from pointing out intellectual dishonesty.

[Guest DWA]

I'll never cease to be amazed by and laugh at the people who can look somebody right in the face who had an experience for which they were not present, and say: you didn't have that.

But it does seem to be a prerequisite in today's science curricula.

Right, Ranae?

[dmaker]

I'll never cease to be amazed by and laugh at the people who can look somebody right in the face who had an experience for which they were not present, and say: yes, let's chalk that up to a creature with zero proof of existence. Though I suppose it's people like that who keep this thing going forever.