This is where we must agree to disagree, because in my opinion, that would be freakin’ awesome!
I shall now prove, using symbolic modal logic, that bigfoot exists:
- It is possible that Bigfoot exists
- If Bigfoot exists, He would be wicked cool! Beat-up-Chuck-Norris-Onehanded Cool!
- Magic Happens
- Bigfoot Exists - QED!
Pravnik, you made the above comment after I said:
Originally Posted by Valteron
They may add a line about the “mighty mountains of our land, where Bigfoot waves his mighty hand” to some patriotic songs and insist that these have to be sung by all children at school.
That is where I, as an abigfootist, start to push back.
Well, in fact here is the full patriotic song. If you want the melody, go to the Cyberhymnal here. It is sung to the tune of “Eternal Father, Strong to Save”. Play the music and sing along with the words. Never mind that there is no evidence of Bigfoot. If your faith is strong you will believe and sing along.
“Elusive Sasquatch strong to flee
American ape forever free!
The mighty mountains of our land,
Where Bigfoot waves his mighty hand
Shall never more corrupted be
By skeptics disbelieving thee.”
Indeed, as Mitt Romney observed recently, it does not matter that he believes that the Sasquatch came over from the Holy Land in a ship he built at the command of God. What matters is that a person of “faith in Sasquatch” be elected.
This proof is invalid!
You forgot the funny characters.
Do not hide your light under a bushel! Let the world know that you are a person of faith in Bigfoot. Order your statue of Bigfoot here.
If anyone laughs at you and asks how you can believe in anything so unproven and improbable, show great offence and tell them that they must show respect for your beliefs.
For some reason, in our society, irrational beliefs in unproven and improbable beings in spite of logic and reason is considered a virtue, called “faith”. Persons of “faith” are apparently entitled to demand respect for their irrational views that is accorded to no other form of political, scientific or social opinion.
Listen here you abigfootists: I’ve personally seen a bigfoot! And so have many of my friends and family members – these are very trustworthy people. My father is a professor and my mother is a doctor! Are you saying they’re liars? Hmmm? How dare you! How can you presume to know what they’ve seen and experienced? You don’t know. You just don’t.
This thread is sublime.
As I have said before, I am one of the world’s only fundamentalist. evangelical agnostics and I tend to hate atheists which some people don’t understand. I was thinking of something similar just yesterday.
People all over the world have given surprising accounts of alien spacecraft and their inhabitants. The vast majority of these accounts are easily debunked and a few are just plain stupid involving anal probes and things. There are whack-jobs all over the net and in print that spread outlandish lies about these aliens.
According to your logic, I should call myself and alien atheist but I am most certainly not one. Regardless of whether any of these accounts is true at all, I still think there is a reasonable chance that aliens really do exist. Therefore, I am an alien agnostic instead of an alien atheist. Now, I think the chance of a real Bigfoot is probably less than real live aliens but I would put myself in the agnostic camp there as well.
I rather suspect you agree that you can tell an alien if you ever met one - so I’m sure you agree that knowledge of aliens is not impossible to obtain. We can never prove aliens don’t exist, though.
There are two big differences between aliens and god (well, in the matter of belief.) First, there is no particular reason to think aliens have ever visited. If there is a God, who cares about us, there is a good reason to think he has contacted us. So in the first case the lack of evidence is not at all significant, while in the second it is. As Holmes noted, a dog not barking can be crucial.
The second is that there are good reasons to believe aliens do exist - somewhere. The reasons are getting stronger as we understand the origins of life better, and as we find more planets. Not true with God.
I assume that you would join me in lacking belief in any alien in particular, while perhaps believing in the possibility of aliens in general.
Well done analogy until:
Now we are getting away from the similarities to Bigfoot. Belief in Bigfoot is not considered a virtue and it is not called “faith.”
I’m uncertain what you mean when you say that “Persons of ‘faith’ are apparently entitled to demand respect for their irrational views…” Who are you talking about specifically? Are “all Christians” being broadbrushed once again?
Where have all Christians demanded respect?
Have I demanded that you respect my views? Have the other Christians who have responded in recent posts? Or do they simply offer their viewpoints as strongly as you offer your own? There is nothing wrong with that from either side.
Perhaps you don’t make it a point to hold respect for the irrational viewpoints of others concerning political, scientific or social opinion, but I have respect for their rights to hold and express those opinions – even when I don’t respect the viewpoint itself or the person expressing the viewpoint.
I will tell you what I don’t understand. Why are all these people who DON’T believe in Bigfoot – the ones who are out to ridicule Bigfoot suckers – why are they the ones who keep starting threads about Bigfoot?
What exactly is your debate in this thread? Anything new?
Oh! Ye of little feet!
(snickers from behind a pine tree…)
I think that’s kind of the point. No one builds churches to Bigfoot, but the existence of Bigfoot is as unevidenced as the existence of God - in that there is “evidence”, but it is not trustworthy.
The Dope is hardly a microcosm of society in this respect. Most of us don’t go spouting off our atheism in public. May I remind you that three candidates for President just raised their hands as not accepting evolution, and the press didn’t go “are you guys flippin’ nuts?” These guys are not ignorant hicks, but well educated - and faithful.
The respect is not total. Those who see the Virgin Mary in a pop-tart get laughed at. But the preacher in the megachurch who rants about the devil being here and after us is a pillar of the community. Not just Christians qualify - so do any religionists who make claims. Now, I do admit that claims made by liberal theists, who are not trying to impose moral views on others, are so much better than those made by the radicals that it makes perfect sense for most of us to not challenge them. But we’re really talking about respect for the argument, not for the person or for the consequences of the argument.
The existence of Bigfoot can be logically deduced by numerical methods that prove what Bigfoot wears - since, if Bigfoot wears anything, it necessarily follows that Bigfoot exists in order to wear it.
It is known that large hairy anthropoid sightings are common to the Old World and the New World. That’s two “worlds” (2).
Statistics show that 46% of respondents in the New World indicate a general willingness to accept that some kind of large hairy anthropoid may exist. This rises to 57% in the Old World. Adding these together yields 103 (103).
The first alleged sighting in history was in 1503AD in northern Norway. It is estimated that there have been 256,000 sightings since then. Adding the number of sightings to the year of the first sighting yields 257,503 (257,503)
Multiplying these numbers together yields incontrovertible proof of Bigfoot’s assistance by attesting to what Bigfoot wears! If you turn your calculator upside down.
Yes, exactly but that is how I look at the God issue as well. Then again, my true agnostic stance on god includes a much more liberal definition of god than most people tend to use.
I have had the ineffable experience of Bigfoot revealing himself to me in my head.
And let me tell you, once Bigfoot reveals himself to you, you’ll never be the same.
Someday we’ll all have to choose between Bigfoot and Chupacabra. On that day, brothers, there will be a reckoning.
My bolding.
It’s you! You are the Bigfoot. All hail the Bigfoot!
(Disclaimer: Voyager’s not the Bigfoot, he’s a very naughty boy)
ok, you win the thread.
I just hate it when someone tries to hijack all the threads about bigfoot with their gianttrouty comments. Mods, please.
Valteron:
Nicely done, sir!
May I play along? I am a Bigfootist*, to my surprise, since I am not the credulous sort who simply hops on belief-bandwagons or ascribes to beliefs in things for no particular reason. When I do believe things I generally have either an empirical reason (first-hand experience) or the combination of widespread experiences by others (especially if reliably repeatable) plus adequate background knowledge and theory leads me to believe that a certain explanatory model best describes reality in this case.
Example of Type A: I believe the mineral pumice floats in water. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve done it.
Example of Type A resulting in belief going against “accepted wisdom”: I believe some form of mold or mildew will indeed grow on the “guaranteed impervious to mold and mildew” BathFitters acrylic bathroom inserts, despite the customer testimonials. Never found assertions contradicting those claims and testimonials. But I’ve bloody well got recurrent orange mildew growing on ours.
Example of Type B: I believe mass is converted to energy in nuclear fission. I believe that despite not having made any direct observations or even understanding enough of the math and physics involved to independently make that assessment and derive that conclusion based on raw empirical data collected by others plus my own deployment of logic and gradual extension of principles of cause and effect that I do solidly understand. I believe it in large part because its being so explains a lot of phenomena, including the accuracy of predictions made by people that state that their predictions do rely on that premise. And OK, yeah, to a large extent I believe it in large part because folks far more trained in that area than I am say it is so, so you could say I beleive it because lots of other folks believe it.
NOW… as a North American cultural anthropologist I have come to understand some phenomena which I believe are responsible for the origins of the “bigfoot” legend or myth or whatever you want to call it; the Truth behind it does not literally consist of some hitherto-unknown anthropoid creature, big & hairy with huge feet, etc, which is the generally asserted substance of the Bigfoot myth as one encounters it nowadays; instead, Bigfoot was originally a person, not a specific individual person but a social role in which a given person in a community might become “Bigfoot” and be treated in certain ways as a consequence, and regarded by the community in certain ways that allowed them to acknowledge the existence of the “Bigfoot” person while not conceptualizing that person as “one of us” or even as a human.
It is my assertion at this time that the modern sillly-monster understanding of what Bigfoot would have to be in order for Bigfoot to be consided real — a flesh-and-blood, genuinely not-human other-large-primate species thumping around in the North American forests — is not, in fact, the original understanding or meaning; and that someone who asserts or did (in, let’s say, 1886) assert that they “believed in Bigfoot”, should not be thought of as some superstitious yokel who believed or does believe in “things that do not really exist”.
Back to you, sir: In response to your statement “I do not believe in Bigfoot”, I ask not that you reverse that and should “I do believe in Bigfoot”, but rather that you suspend what you think it means to believe in Bigfoot long enough to consider that the word, and its conventional use at least by some people at some time, actually referred to something that was real.
I do not see a “burden of proof”, such that I must prove that “Bigfoot is real”, especially not a burden to prove that Bigfoot in some sense other than that in which I now understand the word to be properly used, is real. I just want you to suspend your beliefs/disbeliefs and consider the matter afresh in light of the anthropological and cultural evidence I am prepared to give you, and then you can walk away from that and draw your own conclusions.
- In what I assume to be the allegorical spirit of the thread and its thrust. But disclaimers nonetheless: I am not really a Bigfootist, nor am I a cultural anthropologist, and I have no reason to think that there really is or was any “role” or practice regarding treating people “as Bigfoot” as described above. But there could have been.