Bigfoot Research--Still No Evidence (Continued)

[Guest LarryP]

So, you can classify people into different categories of belief systems, but can you classify the bigfoot as a real, living organism?

Please explain how my quote (above) regarding negative and positive claims led you to conclude that I "classify people into different categories of belief systems"?

Look, skeptics don't have to prove bigfoot does not exist, the facts are what they are.

Then you should have no problem proving your negative claim. Yet at the same time you're saying that you don't have to prove that BF does not exist.

So which is it?

Sorry that you consider fantasyland and mermaids as pejorative. They weren't meant to be. They were only meant as fair comparisons. Bigfoot is, in fact, a fantasy. It is also a myth, just as mermaids were. Myths are nice, fantasies are nice. I don't see why you take either as an insult. The only issue I have is when people can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Experience is what makes one man's fantasy, another man's reality.

Unlike you, I never went looking for a BF. To the contrary, BF found me. As a result of this experience I know that BF is real.

By your own admission you have spent a lot of time in the wilderness looking for a BF or evidence of a BF and have come up with nothing. So in your mind BF is still a fantasy and a myth.

And I clearly stated that I wasn't insulted.

But, by the way, you ought not fling that term around too much in a discussion about bigfoot, especially if you believe it exists.

I don't believe it exists, I know it exists. (See "experience" and "reality" above.)

Intellectual dishonestly implies that one uses personal bias when looking at an issue

That is correct, among other things.

I really do find this attitude funny. That skeptics would be "absolutely terrified of the unknown". Wow, no intellectual dishonesty there, no personal bias showing in that comment! LOL!!!

Are you familiar with Hume's Syndrome?

[Guest Tontar]

dmaker, you beat me to the punch again! I have the same reaction when I see statements like that. Can't recall for sure, but it's kind of in the realm of begging the question. Making an assumption about something while addressing something else. Assuming that bigfoots exist up front, then assuming that they have done something, and then trying to figure out why they would do it. We don't know why a bigfoot would bend trees, automatically makes the assumption that 1) they exist, and 2) that they bend trees. The only mystery then is why they do it, and then the experts can go off in all sorts of directions postulating what their motivations might be, and trying to draw parallels with other known primates. But by that point, the logical damage has already been done. The camel has gotten its nose under the tent, bigfoot is assumed and essentially confirmed to exist. Which is not and never has been the case. Bigfoot has never been confirmed to exist, in any way, shape or form. Only evidence exists, circumstantial at best, forged most likely for the good of the legend.

Norse, you were in Colville, eh? Not all that far from here. We have relatives over there.

I realize that a good many questionable things can happen in the forests, and some of those can be attributed to conscious acts, like a tree being bent over or branches being twisted or broken. Things happen in nature, and have been happening in nature, for as long as the world has been here. Throughout time, mankind has always tried to make sense of those things, and in many cases that is where religion has arisen. In a similar fashion, the legend of bigfoot is brought to the scene as a likely culprit for things that happen that we might not have an immediate understanding of.

Take for example Finding Bigfoot. They wander through the woods at night, in the dark, with headlamps as modern replacements for old time torches. They hear noises and gasp out, "what's that? Did you hear that?" "It's pretty squatchy here..." "They're heeere!" This is almost exactly the same sort of mumbo jumbo that the ancients did in olden times, attributing night noises to mysterious creatures. Instead of gods and spirits, this time it is the hairy giant of the woods. "It's bigfoot!" This kind of imagination determining the source of the unknown signs is classic and so familiar to anyone who has studied history and religious history, as well as mythology. It's modern myth making in front of our very eyes. It's easy to see it in Finding Bigfoot, and we all say that show is a joke, and their antics are embarrassing, but it's what everyone else does to a greater or lesser extent on their own turf.

We see bent trees all the time. We have 7 acres, with our own patch of forest, and it happens here too. No squatches, but extremely squatchy things happen in our forest. All the time. Year round. It's also common where we go in the big, wild forests. Instead of looking at these things and wondering why a squatch would do this or that, these natural phenomenon simply create an interest, or a curiosity, without the intendant causation attached to it. We never wonder "who" or "what" did it, nor "why" they did it, because that kind of suspicion leads to conscious intent, and bigfoot.

There's no reason to ask why a bigfoot would bend a tree, or twist a branch, because we don't know that they do. We don't know that they do, because we have no evidence they they do. And we have no conclusive evidence that would even seriously suggest that they do exist. So wondering why a bigfoot would bend a tree is well down on the list of questions to ponder. Up higher on that list is why people believe in something that is not tangible, and has not one single piece of compelling evidence or proof. Pondering bigfoot is fun and all, but it's nowhere even close to being considered real in terms of science, or reasonable clues. Just because someone says they do, doesn't mean they do. Since when has word of mouth, and folklore ever been reliable evidence something exists?

[norseman]

Hey Norse. How can you say things like " do we know why a squatch bends trees over?" when we don't even know that squatches exist? That is one of my biggest issues with this whole thing. The assumption that they exist, without any proof, and then we start attributing behaviour to them for pity's sake! And then it also becomes anything that happens in the woods that cannot be easily explained away becomes possibly a squatch. Why does a squatch even need to enter the conversation at that point? Then that bar gets lower and lower until the alternate explanation is barely considered and the phenomenon less odd. Until we have situations where oh look, a pile of leaves. Hmmm, can't rightly say for sure what did that....must be a squatch!

like ive tried explaining to you before if we simply ignore everything compelling then nothing will ever be proven. i think like a hunter.....scrapes, rubs, tracks, etc will at some point lead me to the animal. which i intend to harvest for science so that you and i can all have our proof. but it doesnt work the other way around except by a miracle. ive hunted for big bull elk all of my life, hiked, mule skinned through caynons and over ridges in wilderness and i have yet to hit one with my pickup on the highway. you have to get in there with them.

i do not apply every little thing i see to a squatch...trust me. but there will be times that make u scratch your head and u file it away. because bumbling through the forest applying everything to wind is just as silly as applying everything to a squatch. its just an untrained eye with no bush craft playing the odds or seeing what it wants to see.

iam by no means some bush ninja master.....just a student of the forest trying to learn something daily.

[dmaker]

I don't think you attribute every little thing in the forest to a Squatch, Norse. You seem like a pretty level headed guy. Maybe this is where we differ: I don't really find a tree break to be a compelling event. I don't need to come up with some extraordinary explanation for it. I see them all the time, but just assume there is some rational , natural reason for it. I don't know exactly what it is, but I don't need to know either. Things like that happen all the time. And I don't think even wondering if an imaginary animal did it is healthy for anyone. I'll chalk it up ( if I had to come up with something) wind, or snow, or ice, or gravity, or lightning, or earthquake, or a human, or you name it before I would even begin to think it was a squatch. We don't need to make up animals to account for things we find in the natural world. When we do that we turn perfectly normal things like coyote howls into giant apes screeching. We have the tools and the knowledge to ***** the world around us without making up monsters and demons. It's called Science. Bigfoot could use more of it.

[Martin]

Here is an example of whats wrong with bigfoot evidence.

Topic: What I noticed About Bf footprint casts post #3.

"I personally think the real prints are really strong evidence of Bigfoot.

Here are few examples of the dermal ridges on the prints"

Poster then posts 7 or 8 pictures as proof that the bigfoot tracks do indeed contain dermal ridges.

Another poster follows in post # 5 declairing "Game Set Match"

Melissa follows in post #9 saying that one of the examples is in fact her foot print which was cast during an experiment.

Posters continued on without even acknowledging the problem.

The pool of evidence is so tainted with garbage that even Meldrum who is often cited and THE EXPERT has gone around promoting Wallace print casts as real and touts Elk print as a bigfoot bed.

Edited April 5, 2013 by Martin

[Guest Tontar]

Please explain how my quote (above) regarding negative and positive claims led you to conclude that I "classify people into different categories of belief systems"?

It's not that single quote, it is how you separate people into "categories" you have labeled as skeptics, true skeptics, pseudo skeptics, and so on. You did the division, you provided the labels, and you also provided the expectations of the people falling under those headings.

Then you should have no problem proving your negative claim. Yet at the same time you're saying that you don't have to prove that BF does not exist.

LOL! Of course, the old absence of evidence versus evidence of absence argument. Sorry, but you claim something exists, even that you know it exists. The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim that something exists, not on the one who suggests otherwise. Here is a link that covers all of those reasons fairly clearly:

http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/phil_of_religion_text/CHAPTER_5_ARGUMENTS_EXPERIENCE/Burden-of-Proof.htm

In order to satisfy DWA's desire for a "book", here's an excerpt from that page:

"The burden of proof is always on the claim that X exists rather than on the claim that X does not exist. It is a fallacy to claim that X exists unless you prove that there is no X. What is improper is for a person to claim that "X exists" and when asked to prove it, then the person who made the claim uses as a defense of "X exists" the next claim that no one has proven that X does not exist.

If a person claims that X exists and is real then the burden is on that person to supply some support for that claim, some evidence or proof that others can and should examine before accepting it. It is incorrect to think that X exists and is real until someone can prove that there is no X. It is also wrong to think that just because you can not prove that X exists that does not mean that X does not exist and therefore X does exist.

Why is it that the burden is on the person who makes the claim? Well think whether or not it is a better way to proceed through life to accept anything and everything that people claim to be so. Experience should instruct every thinking human that there is a high probability that not everything that people claim to be true is actually true. Some claims might be made with the claimant aware that the claim is not true and some claims might be made with the claimant thinking that they are true but being mistaken. As it is for most humans not a very good idea to proceed through life based on beliefs that are false and thinking things to be true when they are not, most humans and those who would use reason to guide them will want some evidence and reasoning to support a claim being asserted to be true. So the burden is on those who make claims to offer reason and evidence in support of those claims."

Experience is what makes one man's fantasy, another man's reality.

Unlike you, I never went looking for a BF. To the contrary, BF found me. As a result of this experience I know that BF is real.

How did bigfoot find you? Did he (or she) leave any trace? Any hair, saliva, skin cells, anything that might suggest that the bigfoot was a living creature?

By your own admission you have spent a lot of time in the wilderness looking for a BF or evidence of a BF and have come up with nothing. So in your mind BF is still a fantasy and a myth.

Not exactly. Not just in my mind. In a lot of other people's minds as well. As well as in schools, universities, churches, governments, law enforcement, and virtually every other institution in the world. Until bigfoot has been determined to be a real entity, it is classified as a fantasy and a myth. You cannot simply wave that away because you believe otherwise. Yes, you call it knowledge, but it is your knowledge against a much bigger, much more demanding world of proof.

And it is not simply one person's futile search for the bigfoot beast that determines my personal conclusion, it is everyone else tha has tried and failed to find a trace of it, the amount of time, having past with no animal surfacing, and the fact that we are not getting closer to positive resolution, we are getting further and further away from it.

I don't believe it exists, I know it exists. (See "experience" and "reality" above.)

Cool. (See request above for further information)

Are you familiar with Hume's Syndrome?

Somewhat. The irrational resistance to the paranormal. What about it?

Are you suggesting that bigfoot is a product of the paranormal? There are a lot of people that believe that is the case, I realize. And a lot of people believe in the paranormal. And so, is that the route we are going to go down for where to find bigfoot, in the paranormal world, as opposed to the normal, physical world? I'm not suggesting that's where you want to take this, but you brought up the paranormal side of things via Hume.

.....scrapes, rubs, tracks, etc will at some point lead me to the animal. which i intend to harvest for science so that you and i can all have our proof.

Good luck with that. Seriously, if there's something there, I hope you find it and bring it in! Question, do you think you are making progress? Do you think you have found any signs that have led you any closer to harvesting one?

[Guest DWA]

Well, Tontar, that book applies to everybody.

When someone claims that X is real, fine, that person needs to marshal evidence to support the claim.

The same applies to anyone who asserts a competing claim.

You are saying one thing when I assert X is real; you say; I await the proof; and then, you silently await the proof.

When you say "Bullhockey! X isn't real!" you have asserted a competing claim. You don't just get to toss stuff at a wall and see what sticks. When you actively contest a claim, you must support your contesting claim. You don't get to just sit there and say "they're seeing bears, walking upright, with hands and their muzzles shot off " unless you can prove that. And you don't get to sneak out with "you can't make me prove a negative" either. You don't have to prove a negative; you must prove that all evidence of X is a false positive.

Or else you must silently await the proof.

[Guest Tontar]

Well, Tontar, that book applies to everybody.

When someone claims that X is real, fine, that person needs to marshal evidence to support the claim.

The same applies to anyone who asserts a competing claim.

You are saying one thing when I assert X is real; you say; I await the proof; and then, you silently await the proof.

When you say "Bullhockey! X isn't real!" you have asserted a competing claim.

What a joke! You really don't understand what you read, do you.

[norseman]

I don't think you attribute every little thing in the forest to a Squatch, Norse. You seem like a pretty level headed guy. Maybe this is where we differ: I don't really find a tree break to be a compelling event. I don't need to come up with some extraordinary explanation for it. I see them all the time, but just assume there is some rational , natural reason for it. I don't know exactly what it is, but I don't need to know either. Things like that happen all the time. And I don't think even wondering if an imaginary animal did it is healthy for anyone. I'll chalk it up ( if I had to come up with something) wind, or snow, or ice, or gravity, or lightning, or earthquake, or a human, or you name it before I would even begin to think it was a squatch. We don't need to make up animals to account for things we find in the natural world. When we do that we turn perfectly normal things like coyote howls into giant apes screeching. We have the tools and the knowledge to ***** the world around us without making up monsters and demons. It's called Science. Bigfoot could use more of it.

oh i agree whole heartedly that the topic could use alot more objective thinking. but then again you dont use objective thinking when it comes to tree breaks either...... you dont even think about it your words not mine.

i do think about these things i always have and i deduce what it could of been and what it wasnt. if i cannot find a logical explanation? then i dont run to you expecting you to buy whole heartedly into bigfoot do i? no. i nod my head make a mental note of it and move on.

iam not inventing a creature to explain a tree break. if i did that i would live in a world of trolls, pixies, gnomes and have a plethora of explanations for a whole host of forest happenings.

i had something happen to me that you cannot understand something that defies conventional wisdom. so do i still look? yes i do. i also look for sign of every other animal in the forest. just spent two days observing moose sign in melting snow.

if this somehow makes me kooky? so be it.

[Guest Tontar]

i had something happen to me that you cannot understand something that defies conventional wisdom.

When you say it defies conventional wisdom, what does that mean, exactly. I'm not challenging what happened, rather trying to understand what you mean by conventional wisdom. In other words, was it something you saw, heard, felt? Was it something that seemed to happen in a natural way, physically? Or was it something unconventional, like mental, spiritual, paranormal?

Say for example, I am camping out, or hiking, or something. If I were to have a bigfoot experience, assuming from my perspective that bigfoot exists as I would expect other animals to exist. Like a gorilla, or a human, or something else that is a traditional animal. If I saw, heard, smelled, you know, something like that, normal senses indicating to me that there was a bigfoot there, the same way I would take notice of an elk, moose, gorilla, snake, what have you, I would not think that my bigfoot encounter would defy conventional wisdom. It might not make sense if one doesn't believe they could exist, but it should still strike me in a normal, if still profound way.

To me, seeing a bigfoot would not defy conventional wisdom. Being struck semi-conscious by one, or seeing one come in and out of visibility, hearing one talk to me in my head, those kinds of things would defy conventional wisdom. So I'm just trying to understand where on the spectrum your experience lay. If it just defies probability, or defies understanding?

Oh, by the way, we're all kooky in our own ways, so don't sweat it!

Edited April 5, 2013 by Tontar

[norseman]

i saw with my father tracks that i cannot explain. ive spent a whole life time tracking game and ive never seen them since. they were in deep snow and came off of a steep bank onto a abandoned logging road. we were dragging in the deep snow making a shuffling two lined track and this animal was stepping cleanly.

conventional wisdom states large bipedal animals dont live in our forests.

but my father and i were not seeing things, nor was it a hoax. it was made by an animal.....not tree snow falling or some other natural occurance. nor was it a leaping coyote or moose or a upright bear.

i always thought there was somebody more qualified than me to hunt this thing down? and then a person watched finding bigfoot

[Guest Tontar]

Very cool. Were you able to identify toes and all that too?

Yeah, Finding Bigfoot is not going to Find Bigfoot any time soon! Good that you are out looking for real answers. Where you looking mostly?

[norseman]

Very cool. Were you able to identify toes and all that too?

Yeah, Finding Bigfoot is not going to Find Bigfoot any time soon! Good that you are out looking for real answers. Where you looking mostly?

No. You couldn't make out anything distinct. Just giant oblong foot falls spaced far apart.

Similar to this:

http://www.bigfooten...keller-WA09.htm

I'm looking in the Selkirks and the Kettle Crest range, but I'm working in the oil field so that's putting a pinch on things......

Also, you asked me how close I am on the hunt. The only compelling thing I have found recently is that tree break. Which could be something or it could be nothing. No tracks, no sounds, no sightings of course...... I would really love to be able to time warp back in time and put myself on what track I saw.

Edited April 5, 2013 by norseman

[Guest Tontar]

^ Selkirks, haven't been there but I've seen lots of photos from there. Gorgeous place.

Too bad the whole thing is so convoluted. It'd be nice to be able to find leads and follow up on them, rather than having to forge away like a cold call. If they're around, who the heck knows how to find them! And if someone did know, then why the heck are we where we are, eh? Maybe you ought to try to hook up with Bobo, he seems to have a pretty consistent record for finding them just about anywhere. Saw where he took his dad on an outing and sure enough they got definite BF sounds. ;-)

Oh, so your first set of tracks, were they in the Colville area too? East of the Cascades? Higher, colder, more barren?

[norseman]

^ Selkirks, haven't been there but I've seen lots of photos from there. Gorgeous place.

Too bad the whole thing is so convoluted. It'd be nice to be able to find leads and follow up on them, rather than having to forge away like a cold call. If they're around, who the heck knows how to find them! And if someone did know, then why the heck are we where we are, eh? Maybe you ought to try to hook up with Bobo, he seems to have a pretty consistent record for finding them just about anywhere. Saw where he took his dad on an outing and sure enough they got definite BF sounds. ;-)

Oh, so your first set of tracks, were they in the Colville area too? East of the Cascades? Higher, colder, more barren?

The Selkirks are apart of the Inland Temperate Rainforest.

http://www.conservationnw.org/resources/newsletter/newsletter-pdfs/summer2006-feature.pdf

My tracks were high on our mountain which is apart of the huckleberry range with Monumental mountain being the tallest. (South of Kettle Falls)

With the whole Bobo, convoluted thing....... I think people see and hear lot's of stuff in the woods that they think is a Squatch when it's not......... Some of these people agree that the Squatch is copying a known animal and they can somehow tell them apart. I'm not attempting to claim to be a Squatch expert, but I call in and kill coyotes every winter.......... I think I'm a pretty decent coyote caller. Most of the calls I hear attributed to a squatch are coyotes...... I think part of the problem is that coyotes are expanding their range and people in many parts of the country are hearing them for the first time. Coastal people in the NW and people in the far east are not as familiar with the animal, thats all.

If I heard something like samurai chatter in the woods and I knew I was by myself? I would poo poo myself.......... Obviously that's not a whistle or a howl or croak or growl that can be attributed to a known animal..........it's either a hoax or something is not right here.

Wood knocks.......I think a lot of wood knocks are simply people calling back and forth to each other...........kinda like during elk rut with a hunter heavy area. Again, where your at matters...........if it's at the edge of a road complex or a campground? Red flag.

Rock throwing.......here is something else that cannot be attributed to any animal......either it's a human or it's something unknown. If a human is throwing rocks at me in the forest I'm pretty sure I could hunt his butt down and let him know how pleased I'm........ In the case of a squatch that seem to travel long distances quickly? Not so much.

Tree breaks already discussed, some are compelling.

Tracks are most compelling for me, especially when they do stuff that isn't within human range. Again, if the tracks are super long un human stride length? But they are going right down the center of a well traveled road? Red flag. Or they make a big loop and end up at a road? Red flag. If they are remote? ? ? ? What the frick made them?

But I'm not into studying or casting tracks, I'm only interested in the tracks that the creature is standing in..........game over. I'm not going to hold my breath that it's me, but hopefully some one pro kill will end the mystery. And I wish you skeptics would back off on pro kill people......... I'm not some one that is perpetuating the myth and then turning around and profiting from it! Neither are many others......... I have disdain for someone that takes "tourists" into the woods and tells them ghost stories and puts them to bed to hear bumps in the night.

I have a lot of respect for a guy that has a flir scope mounted to a big bore rifle sitting over a bait pile in the middle of the night..........by himself. He is dedicated to ending the mystery..........not perpetuating it. And if he profits anything it will be selling his own autobiography after the fact.

Science has spoken, the bigfoot community can either continue to bury it's head or accept it and give em what they want. And Bobo and the rest..........are just not committed to that.