Why I am an abigfootist!

Great Debates
61

Please go back and read my OP or all the other postings on this thread. I never singled out Christians.

Zoe please look at your sentence above. It is an illogical non-sequitur. You go from saying that perhaps I do not hold respect for irrational VIEWPOINTS to saying that you have respect for the RIGHT of people to hold those opinions.

Please go back and read my OP. I clearly said that I respect the RIGHT of anyone to hold irrational, nutbar views. If the government tried to close down the HQ of the Flat Earth Society, I would help them form a human chain around the building.

You are right, however, that I don’t “hold respect for the irrational viewpoints of others concerning political, scientific or social opinion”. I suspect you do not either, Zoe. Can you tell me honestly that you respect the VIEWPOINT that the Earth is flat as much as you respect the VIEWPOINT that the Earth is spherical? I am talking about your respect for the VIEWPOINT, not your respect for their right to hold it. Please get that distinction clear before we proceed.

Now, regarding the undeserved respect that I feel religion demands, let us do a simple experiment.

Let us take these viewpoints:

  • Government should interfere as little as possible in the economy in order to let free enterprise create wealth

  • Government has a duty to intervene in the economy to protect the environment and ensure social justice

  • The Earth’s climate is warming because of human interventions

  • The Earth’s climate is warming but it is a natural trend

  • The Earth’s climate is not really warming. It just depends on how you interpret trends and measurements.

Now, presumably you do not hold all of these viewpoints at once or you would be seriously mentally disturbed. But the fact is that all of these viewpoints are defensible, and impressive evidence can be marshalled ion favour of each of them.

I am not saying that there is equal, and conclusive evidence in favour of each. Obviously, there cannot be conclusive evidence in favour of contradictory propositions, or the world would not make sense.

But the point I am making is that while all of the above viewpoints are perfectly “respectable”, held by millions of intelligent persons, and defended with many valid statistics and data, people can and do disagree with them freely. Opponents of these viewpoints challenge them, call them ridiculous, facile, and illogical every day. At the simplest level, people arguing these issues even say, “Your idea is a loada crap.” It is all part of reasonable (if impolite) discussion.

Now, let us compare this with the following viewpoints:

  • An invisible being wants me to wear a black hat, grow curly locks on my temples and forbids me to turn on lights on Saturday.

-The Mother of this invisible being appeared to a little girl at Lourdes in the form of a beautiful lady all aglow.

  • This invisible creator-being (whose existence is unproven) hears my thoughts

  • The invisible creator-being is made up of three persons but is still only one being. One of those persons became human 2000 years ago by causing a human virgin to have a son without a biological father. That God-made-man caused himself to die a horrible death to atone to himself for the wrongs of humanity.

  • We can eat the body and blood of the creator-being in the form of a piece of bread once it has been blessed in a certain way by a human with special powers confered by this invisible being.

Now just compare these strange, outlandish, unprovable, viewpoints with the respectable, rational and defensible viewpoints listed above.

Yet, if I were to tell an orthodox Jew that the first viewpoint (not his right to the viewpoint, but the viewpoint itself) is absurd and illogical, I would be called an anti-semite and an insensitive boor. If I told my neighbours who had just received Roman Catholic Communion that their allaeged partaking of the body and blood of Jesus is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, I would be castigated for lacking “respect”.

But if I say, for example, that the universal medicare for which they are lobbying is a ridiculous idea that will harm the quality of medical care in America, they will perhaps argue with me, but they will not demand that I “respect” their viewpoint on medicare by backing off and not attacking it.

You know what I suspect, Zoe? I suspect that religion seeks to protect itself behind a demand for “respect” because it knows how weak, unjustified and unprovable its viewpoints are when examined rigourously in the light of logic.

62

The problem with your assertion is that you are changing my original definition of Bigfoot to show that belief in him could have some rational basis. WHAT original definition, you ask? :dubious:

Well, sir, I will admit that I did not give an original working definition of what I meant by “Bigfoot”. Perhaps that was a mistake, but one can only put so much in a posting and I have been told that some of my postings are so long that I am at risk of developing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome :smiley: .

There are times when we must rely on the assumption that we already have a common *de facto * unspoken definition of something before we start a debate. For example, take the Loch Ness Monster. The word “monster” generally means something deformed, frightening, pathological. “Loch Ness” means a large lake in Scotland.

But we can take it for granted that most people accept the term “Loch Ness Monster” to mean the large, reptilian marine creature with a long neck shown in popular drawings and at least one allleged photo. Furthermore, most people assume we are talking about a breeding population of this unknown species, unless we allege that one solitary Nessie has lived hundreds of years.

But could I justifiably come into a “Nessie” discussion as you have done, sir, and point out that since “monster” means something deformed, frightening and pathological, “Nessie” cannot be a monster, since it is perhaps frightening, but in no way mishapened, deformed or ugly, any more than any other marine reptile.

On the other hand, a very large sturgeon, covered with revolting tumours all over his body, with teeth growing out of the top of his head, etc., could legitimately be called a monster. So, I would point out, that a large, deformed sturgeon could be the basis of the Nessie myth, and that therefore one is right to be a believer in Nessie, since the belief might once have had a rational basis.

But this would be an irrelevant intrusion into a discussion about Nessie. It is playing with words, I am afraid.

By the same token, I have no doubt that stories of wild men that occur all over the world might be based on memories and legends that formed around ragged, poor and perhaps hideously deformed individuals who in barbaric ages were shunned and driven out of human communities, lived in the forest and sometimes (not surprisingly) engaged in theft, abduction of children, or violence.

But that is completely irrelevant to the discussion begun by my OP. It is irrelevant, because I and I daresay every other person reading my OP understood the term “believing in the existence of Bigfoot” to mean “believing in the existence of an elusive, giant ape-like primate species inhabiting the wilderness areas of western North America”.

If I was remiss in not laying down that definition at the very beginning of this thread, I trust you will allow me to make up for it now.

Given the restriction imposed by this definition, your comment about the possible realities underlying the Bigfoot and other wild man legends is interesting but irrelevant to this discussion.

You have presented a credible case for the origin of a legend. It does not change my assertion that those who allege that a giant ape-like species actually exists in North America have the buden of proving it.

63

I think that is a valid and entirely defensible position to take. But in my post I explained that the unconventional definition for the word “Bigfoot” that I’m using is not the changing of an understood definition at all, but rather the restoration to an original meaning of the term “Bigfoot”, and that it’s the “giant ape-species” definition that now constitutes conventional usage that was the original instance of changing an understood definition!

I think that’s valid, too.

64

Your problem seems to be that you assume that “atheist” can only mean a person who is 100% sure that there is no God, just as an “alien atheist” can only mean someone who is 100% sure there are no aliens. Everyone else must, by your definition, be an agnostic.

There are things whose existence is proven (mice, rhinos, water, diamonds, the planet Jupiter) and things whose existence is unproven (planets virtually identical to the Earth outside the solar system, life outside Earth, aliens who visit Earth, God, Bigfoot, Nessie). These things are all part of the class of items whose reality has not been proven. In that sense they are all on an equal footing.

But when it comes to their probability, they are not equal. There is probability to be considered.

As Richard Dawkins points out in The God Delusion, 100% certainty that God exists or does not exist are only two extremes in a continuous spectrum. Dawkins does not define himself as 100% certain that there is no God, you may be interested to know.

Neither do I. Does that make Dawkins and I agnostics rather than atheists? No, because a person can leave the door open a tiny crack to new evidence but live in the probability that there never will be such evidence because he is in practice and everyday reality almost completely certain that such evidence will never be produced.

I believe that you, Shagnasty, are probably a Bigfoot atheist but an agnostic regarding extremely earth-like planets outside our solar system. I know I am.

What if someone bet you $5000 that a live Bigfoot would be captured before the end of 2008? The money from both bets is to be deposited with a reliable trustee who will turn it over to you if no Bigfoot is produced before midnight, December 31, 2008. Would you take him up on it? I know I would in a second! Easiest five grand I ever made. But still, I am open to be convinced by evidence that Bigfoot exists.

Now, what if someone wanted you to bet $5000 that no planet in the size and temperature range of Earth (certain limits would be set for purposes of the bet) will be discovered in another solar system in the next five years? Whoa!!! NOT a wise bet. They are discovering planets around other suns left right and centre these days. I would hold off on that one. So I think you are an agnostic when it comes to those planets.

It all depends on how many indications of probability we have regarding the concept.

65

You forgot to add that anyone who assails your logic is overly-pedantic and an obvious rabid anti-Bigfootist.

66

Can Bigfoot make a foot so big… something?

67

Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it magic.

Now where have I heard that one before?

68

The Sasquatch Militia wants you!

(Depending on your species, as recruit or as field rations.)

69

Damn Valteron ! something else you don’t believe in ! You could knock me over with a feather ! :stuck_out_tongue:

70

That’s just what Kirk Says!!! I may have to change from sasquanostic to return to the C of B.

Come to think of ot… look how the forest is designed to hide the large brutes from site. The leaves grow together in such a way to obscure shade and camoflage their movement. That is proof they were designed by Bigfoot!!!

71

Substitute “salmon” for “trout,” and the Sasquatch Militia is way ahead of you.

72

I have had the experience of a glowing screen in my head–something like a “message board” with “posters” revealing themselves to me–and whenever I say that my sophomore-year roommate was really hairy and wore size-14 shoes, some guy named Der Skcos screams that I’m the deranged enemy of all reason and decency because an angry gorilla named Inigo Montoya killed his father and it’s ALL MY FAULT!

I’m probably just imagining the whole thing because I’m tired.

73

Why are you people arguing about false gods when it’s the dust bunnies under your beds that are controlling you with their mind rays?

74

This one is on to us, increase the power of the mind rays on this.
Just a joke, of course Dust bunnies don’t have mind rays.

.We use strong pheromones instead. .