Sometimes it does, you have to consider the context. There is no evidence of a planet called Jeremy between Jupiter and Saturn. The evidence (orbits of the two real planets) is inconsistent with the presence of such a planet. The planet Jeremy does not exist.
The evidence for Bigfoot isn’t quite as conclusive, but it still strongly supports the conclusion that it does not exist, because it is contradictory. Bigfoot “sightings” cover a huge geographical range, which is evidence of a large breeding population. But no-one has ever produced any physical evidence or pictures, which is evidence of, at best, a small population.
Some posters have said they trust the sighting reports because “people are generally truthful”. Bear in mind, the characteristics of any self-selecting group, such as Bigfoot reporters, are not necessarily the same as the general population.
You’re still confusing lack of evidence and counter-evidence. We can mathematically prove that Jeremy doesn’t exist by calculating the orbits of other planets. No such proof exists against bigfeets.
To expand somewhat on the “no fruit” argument given upthread: seriously, what would Bigfoot eat? If he subsists primarily on vegetation like gorillas do, then he would be built like a gorilla- a huge paunch for digesting vegetable matter that would dictate a primarily quadrepedal stance. If he’s an opportunistic omnivore/scavenger, then he’s competing with half the Carnivora in N. America such as bears, skunks, raccoons, etc.
IIRC, they’ve been reported around rivers, “fishing” as bears do. I’m reasonably certain the reports are actually of bears and not BF, but since I don’t have a link to any one report, take what I said for what it’s worth.
IMO, BF is the same as ghosts and aliens. They’re whatever the particular story/situation calls for.
. . . or he could subsist primarily on vegetation like a . . . human . . . and be built like a human.
. . . or he could be an opportunistic omnivore/scavenger, like a . . . human . . . and compete with half the carnivora in N. America like a . . . human.
Seriously, I do not believe in bigfoot. I think it would be awesome if he exists, but I’m 99.9% sure he doesn’t . . . but you guys are putting forth some terrible arguments.
No, I’m not confused, I did say the situation with Bigfoot isn’t so clear cut. Planet Jeremy believers would counter by saying it’s made of magic fairy dust, and does not interact with other planets, and can only be viewed through the glass of a green beer bottle. They might even construct a detailed theoretical framework to explain how this is the case.
We may just be arguing semantics here. At what point do you say “X does not exist” rather than the more technically correct “the probability of X existing is vanishingly small”? The distinction is practical, not philsophical. In the case of Bigfoot, I’d be pretty happy saying the former, although I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.
For every pseudoscience (and cryptid) in the world, one could say “Oh yeah? Well, nobody has ever proven that _____ does NOT exist. You can’t prove it doesn’t exist, therefore, there’s a chance it’s real! Gotcha!”
For every logical argument that astrology is utter crap, there’s always some irrational person who ignores logic and says “Yeah, well you forgot to consider that this one time my horoscope said to expect changes, and that very day something changed! How do you explain that? Besides, that one time that nothing happened according to my horoscope, it was probably because Mercury was in retrograde…”
I could argue that the future can be divined from the consistency and smell of vomit, call it Vomitology, and if anyone tries to pass this off as untrue, I could just say “Well, you can’t prove that Vomitology is false! There’s a 99.9% chance that it’s not true, but you can’t say for sure, can you?” I could provide endless stories of various instances where the vomit smelled especially putrid, which everyone knows is indisputable evidence that death is imminent. And lo and behold, I turned on the news that day and there was a story about somebody who died that day! Just like the vomit predicted! If nobody died that day, I could say that the noodle chunks in the vomit cancelled out the putrid death omen, so Vomitology is perfectly valid! You have done nothing to prove that it is false.
Sooner or later, people start to hear about this vomitology, people start to throw up and sometimes see shapes in the vomitus, some of which bear an uncanny resemblance to events in their life. Hmmm, they say- maybe there is something to vomitology after all. Word spreads, people believe.
Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that vomitology is anything but pure…well, barf. Nobody here has provided any valid evidence that bigfoot exists.
Except that it is on the blurry periphery of plausibility that a large, reclusive ape could exist in the vast forests of North America. New species are discovered all the time, even in places that scientists and explorers have looked before. The megamouth shark was never even rumored before its discovery in 1976.
A horse with one horn and magical powers is unprecedented and has no basis in the natural world. Ditto the idea that the position of the stars at your birth can determine anything about your personality or day to day life.
Science:
-Is perfectly compatible with the existence of bigfoot
-Completely contradicts the existence/validity of unicorns, astrology, and vomitology
I think Colibri’s argument is pretty spot on, and there’s a good test case for it: after all, a 3m tall ape actually did exist in south-east Asia, and yes, its remains do feature in traditional Chinese medicine, for instance – even though it died out 300,000 years ago!
Gigantopithecus was extinct by the end of the Pleistocene epoch. They haven’t existed for 12,000 years and we still were able to find remains.
Bigfoot, according to believers, is still alive today and yet we’ve never found a single Bigfoot bone, carcass, or any other remains whatsoever. You’d think that it would be easier to find bones/remains of a living species than a 12,000 year extinct one.
Humans don’t eat grass, bark or the leaves off most bushes and trees, like gorillas do. That kind of low-grade fodder takes a digestive system you’d have to carry in a wheelbarrow if you wanted to remain bipedal. Humans can only get a significant amount of calories from the highest-density plant sources. Compared to almost any mammal with adaptations to a herbivorous diet, it’s a laugh to call humans vegetarians. Without farming, it would be damnedly difficult for a vegetarian human to survive. Native Americans depended heavily on meat not just for protein but for the sheer amount of calories necessary to not starve, along with primitive farming.
“The megamouth shark was never even rumored before its discovery in 1976”
The oceans are far more unexplored than any land area on earth for the obvious reaosn that we spend far less time there, and they are vastly larger than land. I have no problem with the idea there are many undiscovered species, particularly rare ones normally living under 100m.
As an analogy to a large hominid being plausibly undiscovered on a highly habitated continent, it is useless as a comparison.
Not quite. Science doesn’t have a problem with the idea of a hypothetical ape, but the evidence for Bigfoot does not make much sense from a scientific perspective. Here is a site listing Bigfoot sightings across North America. There have been sightings reported in every US state except Hawaii. So, Bigfoot is both scarce enough that no concrete evidence exists, yet somehow common enough that it can maintain breeding populations over thousands of miles of territory. That is a glaring contradiction.
By comparison, the ranges of the Black and Grizzly bears, which are large animals that are frequently sighted, are much smaller than the reported range of Mr Bigfoot.
That’s not a great counter-example. The oceans are vast, deep, and poorly explored. For example, we don’t know where the blue whale goes to breed. And that’s a creature over 100ft long that conveniently surfaces every few minutes. The chances of finding an unknown large animal in the sea are much greater than those of finding one on land.
I agree. I thought of megamouth very early in this thread, but was reluctant to mention it for this very reason . . .
. . . but that’s going overboard. Look at its distribution. There are major shipping lanes in there that have seen heavy traffic for literally hundreds of years. There are hectares upon hectares of the PNW and the boreal forest that don’t see more than a handful of humans per decade, if that.
Again, I almost feel silly arguing in favor of bigfoot, because I honestly don’t believe he exists, but I find it ridiculous the way that some people here are stomping their feet and insisting his existence is impossible. Highly unlikely? Yes. In the same category as unicorns, invisible planets, and astrology? No.
Its very rare, and its a deepwater shark, rarely seen on the surface. Even after its discovery there are only 50 reports from 30 years while being actively searched for. Its a filter feeder so baitlines wont generally catch them. It says in the entry its mistake for an Orca sometimes. Any remains will generally be deep underwater, no footprints, tracks, etc etc.
Its far more plausible it went ‘undiscovered’ because tons of people sighting it didnt even care what species it is, its just a ‘shark’ to most people. You wont find a similar lack of care when it comes to a large widely publicised mythical hominid in North America that rather than being accidentally found in vast oceans has been actively searched for, and still not found.
With only 50 sightings, that graphic is not very meaningful. It just means it’s been observed between those latitudes, not that it’s common in that area of ocean.
I was very clear that Bigfoot is not in the same category in as an invisible planet. However, like my exaggerated example, it takes a lot of special pleading to turn the evidence for Bigfoot into a coherent case. I notice you haven’t commented on my point about the distribution of Bigfoot.
Arguements about the “distribution” due to sightings makes no sense. Its almost circular reasoning. Your taking them all as true to show they are all false. All you can really say is the likelyhood is high that they are not ALL actual sightings (or most of em for that matter). Which just leaves you with the few that sound very credible and make sense. Which are the very ones that make some people go hmmmm just a bit.
Or are you giving equal weight to the sighting by the drunk teenagers who saw one behind the 7-11 dumpster in Atlanta to the one experienced woodsman who saw one in the most remote parts of western Canada?
