Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Sidhe
For the existence of bigfoot we have these categories of evidence, all of them well attested:
1. Thousands of sightings from eyewitnesses. One would be wrong to throw these out, even as a skeptic. No one case proves anything, but the sheer number of people should alert one to something unexplained going on. And the consistency of detail is astounding if one wishes to believe these are all misidentifications and hallucinations. We have years of reports that correspond with each other, many with details researchers didn't appreciate well enough until recently.
2. Tracks that show anatomical details no hoaxer would have bothered to create (at least until they became a "feature" of what is considered a legit track). The number and distribution of tracks suggests, as author and researcher John Green pointed out years ago, that if it is a hoax, there is a worldwide organization committed to creating and sustaining the hoax. These tracks are often found in places people are very unlikely to go, suggesting that there are many more hoaxed tracks never found. How do skeptics explain this?
3. Hair samples. There is a collection of hairs now that show internal consistencies but also they do not come from any known animal. The most interesting feature of the hair samples is that they appear to be human in most respects, but they do not have the toxins our hairs do as a result of our living in our toxin rich society.
4. Fecal samples. Some as large as coke cans. (I've seen one of these in a picture with the coke can next to it.) They are from no known animal, and when tested for DNA come back as "likely human".
5. Photographic evidence. By itself it isn't much, but it does support the other evidence.
6. The Patterson/Gimlin film. If one spends the time to analyze the film, especially if you have one of the stabilized images you can get from other boards, you will notice many features that argue against the subject being a man in a suit. As a whole, these features simply overwhelm the contradictory evidence.
7. Secondary evidence arising from analysis of the evidence we now have; for instance, the foot size distribution comes out as a bell curve, suggesting a real population of animals, not a hoax (since one assumes hoaxers wouldn't know each other and wouldn't make enough prints of different sizes to create the impression of a population -- unless you accept the worldwide hoaxing organization theory, which is absurd!). |
Okay, I appreciate your attempt to be logical about this. I don't claim to have anywhere near the knowledge base on this subject that you do, so I can't exactly engage in any debate about the varacity of any of the supposed evidence and whether it is truly "well attested." I have, admittedly, never heard the "bell curve" argument about footprints before... but I don't add it to my list of compelling arguments quite yet.
Anyway -- what needs to be part of this discussion, if you want to really be all-inclusive about it -- are the bits of evidence that work against the existence of Bigfoot (or whatever).
Without having the background to cite studies and research, I'll just frame it in one simple item:
1. If there are indeed giant, bipedal, mammalian creatures that spend time in woods all across our continent (and perhaps others), and are so widespread and numerous as to maintain independent populations in practically every corner of the country (after all, we do have eyewitnesses and footprints from here in Maryland, not just the Oregon and California woodlands), then it seems staggeringly unlikely that we, a civilization that ravages virgin timberlands at an alraming rate and either temporarily or permanently inhabits such a wide range of climates and settings, would have spent all these years or development and exploration without ever coming across one bit of uncontested physical evidence of their existence.
With that statement, phrased as fairly as I am able, I am very comfortable in feeling that Occam's Razor is at the very least up for grabs.
Again -- I bring no particular expertise to the subject, but that is, quite obviously, what you're up against. Just confirm that
one hair sample,
one fecal sample, or
one bit of anything is demonstrably from a heretofore unidentified large mammalian species, and I think you'll have a great big foot in the door. Until then, it's going to be hard for any "academic" work coming from a group of dedicated believers to convince much of anyone.