I have a question for Bigfoot naysayers.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

[QUOTE=Dan Norder]
OK, first, it’s not merely serpentine characteristics that makes something a dragon, both by modern definitions and the original. But even if that were the proper definition, there are all sorts of creatures that do not fit that description that have been called dragons as part of the claim that belief in dragons existed worldwide. Dragons are not known world wide, and great big mythical beasts with serpentine characteristics aren’t either.

As far as your point about ghosts, vampires, werewolves, etc. goes, it’s the same thing. If you stretch a definition past what it’s supposed to be then the definition is no longer valid. Vampires are not merely some creature that’s draining in some way. That’s like deciding that water is anything that’s a liquid and saying that water has been found in a desert when it’s really oil.

Words mean things. Ignoring what they mean and making up new personal meanings so that you can argue a point is just nonsense.
[/QUOTE]
Yabbut we’re discussing words that “mean” things which don’t physically exist. A dragon is not like water or oil, where you can examine its properties objectively and arrive at a consensus.

Yes, to many modern English-speakers, the term “dragon” evokes the fire-breathing, six-limbed treasure-hoarders from Jeff Easley calendar art. I am simply arguing that the term can be applied more generally to accomodate similar majestic serpentlike beasts, such as Falcor the Luck-Dragon from The Neverending Story.*

See, Wikipedia agrees with me! The internet is on my side for once!

*ah-ah-ahhh, ah-ah-ahhh, ah-ah-ahhh… Neverending Sto-REEE… ah-ah-ahhh, ah-ah-ahhh, ah-ah-ahhh…

62

[QUOTE=Attack from the 3rd dimension]
Two threads running about Bigfoot, of all things, and this is the most sensible point made so far.

Where is the ‘damn straight’ smiley?
[/QUOTE]

No, sorry. I’m not a bigfoot tinhatter at all but that was a horrible point. It’s like saying Ashley Force and Danica Patrick are the only female racecar drivers, therefore females cannot drive racecars.

(to the nitpickers out there - I know your trigger finger’s itchy!: I’m not 100% sure if A. Force and D. Patrick are the only female racecar drivers but it’s just an analogy, ok? Let it go.)

63

[QUOTE=Dan Norder]
Words mean things. Ignoring what they mean and making up new personal meanings so that you can argue a point is just nonsense.
[/QUOTE]

Except that Terrifel isn’t inventing personal meanings for any of those words. He’s using them in their common, widely accepted sense: everyone calls the flying, wingless serpents of Asian folklore “dragons.” That’s not a neologism invented for the purpose of this thread, it’s been common usage since time immemorial.

64

I can’t help noticing that most of you naysayers are from the East Coast. I’m not surprised. You probably don’t believe in the Pacific Northwest tree octopus either. Harrumph!

65

[QUOTE=Chefguy]
I have proof that Bigfoot exists. Mine’s a 2004.
[/QUOTE]

This one’s bigger.

66

[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor]
Of all primates, only the Baboon and the Human thrive in areas without significant fruit resources. There are limited wild fruit resources in Europe and North America, compared with Sub-Sahaharan Africa, or Southeast Asia. So, we’re not a promising site for primates.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Cisco]
No, sorry. I’m not a bigfoot tinhatter at all but that was a horrible point. It’s like saying Ashley Force and Danica Patrick are the only female racecar drivers, therefore females cannot drive racecars.
[/QUOTE]

Curiously, I’m not particularly dismissive of Bigfoot.

Bosda makes an ecological point: In general, primates are found in areas with fruit, and that this decreases the probability of primates in areas like the pacific northwest, areas without significant wild fruit.

This is the first major ecological point made on the thread. It is made without obvious logical fallacies, and it is made without being an ass, and without saying “QED, I am right, shag off all yea who disagree”. He carefully makes the point as a probability statement. It is logical, civil, and concise, hardly a horrible point. He draws a line around the odds of there being a bigfoot. He doesn’t state that it is impossible, merely that the odds are lower than if his fruity statement weren’t true.

I don’t know much about drag racing, but I think Bosda’s point is more like:

“There are no known major racetracks in Nunavut. Two major male racers have been on a goodwill tour in Nunavut. No female racecar drivers are known to have toured in Nunavut. You can tell me that there is a female racecar driver who has never won a race, who has never autographed a photo before or after a race, and who has never done an endorsement, but here’s a blurry picture of her coming out of the women’s bathroom in Nunavut, but I will find that improbable.”

67

[QUOTE=Mister Rik]
I can’t help noticing that most of you naysayers are from the East Coast. I’m not surprised.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not.

I’ve been trying to figure out why the term, “naysayer” bothers me in this context. Perhaps because it’s so often applied to people speaking out about something that has bucketloads of objective proof (e.g., “Holocaust naysayer” or “moonlanding naysayer”).

Being a “bigfoot naysayer” is like being a “phlogiston naysayer.” Why would one bother to naysay something that has essentially zero credible evidence for its existence?

Once upon a time, when America was largely unexplored and we really didn’t know all that much about the great apes, it made sense that there could be an unknown species out there. But we’ve grown up and moved on as the evidence has failed to materialize and the probability of such a thing existing has dropped indistinguishably close to zero. There are some people who still hang on to the romantic dream of bigfoot, but I think in their hearts even most of the “believers” know they aren’t really out there.

68

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
I’m not.

I’ve been trying to figure out why the term, “naysayer” bothers me in this context. Perhaps because it’s so often applied to people speaking out about something that has bucketloads of objective proof (e.g., “Holocaust naysayer” or “moonlanding naysayer”).

Being a “bigfoot naysayer” is like being a “phlogiston naysayer.” Why would one bother to naysay something that has essentially zero credible evidence for its existence?
[/QUOTE]

Er, I was trying to be funny?

69

digglebop, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, digglebop, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, digglebop, there is a Bigfoot. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Bigfoot. It would be as dreary as if there were no digglebops. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Bigfoot! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Bigfoot, but even if they did not see Bigfoot coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Bigfoot, but that is no sign that there is no Bigfoot. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, digglebop, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Bigfoot! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, digglebop, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

70

Well done, BMalion!

[QUOTE=Mister Rik]
Er, I was trying to be funny?
[/QUOTE]
I know (I figured that out from the tree octopi), but I didn’t connect that the East Coast comment was part of the funny. Sorry. The rest of it wasn’t aimed at you anyway, but at the thread title.

71

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
I know (I figured that out from the tree octopi), but I didn’t connect that the East Coast comment was part of the funny. Sorry. The rest of it wasn’t aimed at you anyway, but at the thread title.
[/QUOTE]

I mentioned “East Coast” because Bigfoot is traditionally a Pacific Northwest legend. I was thinking along the lines of how West Coast sports fans complain that the East Coast-based media focuses all its attention on East Coast teams (usually a complaint by college football fans when the polls are heavily “biased” toward East Coast teams, but also evident in the way we here in Washington can turn on our TVs every weekend during baseball season and, oh look, it’s the Yankees/it’s the Red Sox/it’s the Yankees playing the Red Sox).

72

I watched the linked video, and clearly that’s a man in a snubfin dolphin suit.

73

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
Well done, BMalion!
[/QUOTE]

Aw shucks, thank you.

74

[QUOTE=Miller]
He’s using them in their common, widely accepted sense: everyone calls the flying, wingless serpents of Asian folklore “dragons.”
[/QUOTE]

First off, he’s using a sense even more broad than that to try to support an argument that’s still wrong even with the bastardized definition.

More importantly, a definition widely accepted by people off the street with no particular knowledge on the subject means absolutely nothing about that definition being correct, otherwise “literally” means the opposite of its real meaning, “evolution” means something completely unscientific, “mythology” means something some putz saw in a comic book once and so forth and so on. If you go by what average people off the street do, plurals are formed by adding an apostrophe S to the end of words. You can have a million idiots agree with you on something and that doesn’t change whether you are right or not.

Dragons are what folklorists and other experts on the topic say they are, not what some kid who watched “The Neverending Story” thought. Sure, people off the street can say whatever they want… they can call a cow a dragon if they really want to… but if they want to make an argument about dragons being found in the myths from all around the world, they have to use the definition as used by the people who study myths, not some ignorant nonsense they heard somewhere.

75

[QUOTE=Dan Norder]
…if they want to make an argument about dragons being found in the myths from all around the world, they have to use the definition as used by the people who study myths, not some ignorant nonsense they heard somewhere.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, you mean like all those experts who were sources for the Wiki article linked earlier? You know, the one which disagrees with you?

76

[QUOTE=Q.E.D.]
Oh, you mean like all those experts who were sources for the Wiki article linked earlier? You know, the one which disagrees with you?
[/QUOTE]

There are no expert sources there saying the things that earlier poster said to try to justify his error. And if you read the article instead of just trying to be snarky you’d know that.

77

Apparently western PA is a hot bed of Bigfoot interest. My gf and I are planning on attending a conference in September. The cool thing is wondering about and trying to peg individuals as “believers” or “having fun laughing”. We will be having fun, laughing (quietly/discretely) :smiley:

From: Bigfoot page

78

If there were Bigfeet/sasquatchewan (I like that one), we’d have found a dead one.

We don’t find dead dolphins because we don’t generally travel on the seabed.

79

[QUOTE=vetbridge]
Apparently western PA is a hot bed of Bigfoot interest…
[/QUOTE]

In Ohio we have Grassman.

From that site:

Hey! That sounds like my brother!

80

[QUOTE=BMalion]
In Ohio we have Grassman.
[/QUOTE]

Sounds like a super hero from a Harold and Kumar movie.