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Merged Bigfoot follies

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JoeBentley said:
It's parently obvious that you don't understand the difference.

This sad silly "But you can't know for sure!" game that Woo Slinger and Woo Apologist play is an intellectual dead end.
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I would say that you don't understand. Skepticism is an objectiveprocess for analyzing available evidence, it shouldn't be a positional stance, and probably shouldn't be used to describe a forum membership as a whole.
 
William Parcher said:
Bigfooter forums are pretty much the only place that you see the terms "scoftic" and "true skeptic" being used consistently to describe others and how they should change their thinking.
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Yeah, I think it's an inappropriate way to describe what we do here.
 
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Skeptical Greg said:
Knights went all ballistic on me when I was posting at the old BFF. I think it was about the gait/leg lift, but I'm not sure..

I wished I had saved some of those discussions...
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Hey, was it in 2003? you might be the first scoftic ever! :D
 
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Parcher- A true skeptical approach probably is useless in the case of bigfoot since we have no evidence to examine.

I think kilts are a confounding variable, Tsig.
 
Jodie said:
Parcher- A true skeptical approach probably is useless in the case of bigfoot since we have no evidence to examine.
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No Bigfoot body in over 400 years is the evidence to be examined.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Non-existence wins.
 
Jodie said:
Science never claims to have the final answer for anything, it's just the best conclusion you can achieve based on current evidence available at that moment, it isn't a static process, and it isn't unequivocal. I remember you stating this numerous times on both forums in the past and that your opinion would change if definitive proof was ever offered.
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Yes, and if someone found a live Tyrannosaur then the scientific consensus on the existence of that organism would need to be updated too. Gravity could spontaneously stop working the way we think it does, and we'd have to revisit our understanding there.

It is impractical, however, to consider everything we know to be provisional. This is why my home is not ringed in a Tyrannosaur-proof fence (just in case one might be out there). This is why NASA bothers with big, expensive projects like putting satellites into orbit or rovers on Mars. Without utmost confidence in our knowledge the relevant science, those endeavors would be colossal wastes of time and money. But they aren't, because we actually know stuff. Just because we can dream up some "monkeys-might-fly-out-of-my-butt" scenario that turns our worldview inside out does not mean that our knowledge is truly provisional.

So here are three unequivocal bits of knowledge established by science:
1) There is no bigfoot.
2) Tyrannosaurs are extinct.
3) Tyrannosaurs were not birds.
 
The Shrike said:
Just because we can dream up some "monkeys-might-fly-out-of-my-butt" scenario that turns our worldview inside out does not mean that our knowledge is truly provisional.

So here are three unequivocal bits of knowledge established by science:
1) There is no bigfoot.
2) Tyrannosaurs are extinct.
3) Tyrannosaurs were not birds.
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Unfortunately it is provisional. There is no evidence for bigfoot's existence, TRex doesn't roam the earth anymore but chickens are genetically related to TRex.
 
Oh here it is from Nature:

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080821/full/4541035a.html

So here we have two different researchers arguing over whether the chicken is in fact related to TRex making this research provisional, gee imagine that!

And this guy says it better than I do:

http://advocatusatheist.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/is-scientific-knowledge-provisional/

Thus, it seems to me, that any information which has not yet been discovered or exists theoretically (i.e., remains unverified) denotes a level of uncertainty, and so is provisional. Whereas any information which has been discovered and tested (i.e., verified) denotes an established understanding–-the basis for our scientifically gained knowledge

Needless to say, it would be remiss not to point out that post-discovery scientific knowledge carries with it a tentative certainty-–and by this I mean the established knowledge may be incomplete and/or subject to revision (e.g., the Big Bang theory is incomplete, but so far as we know accurate, and other theories may later be improved upon, such as cardiovascular understanding which was greatly improved with the advent of MRI technology).

What this suggests is that, because our certainty is tentative, absolute knowledge may be out of our reach even as we feel absolutely confident, or certain, of the knowledge we do have. Additionally, modern cognitive science also reveals that our certitude is an emotional construct, and in actuality, there is no such thing as absolute certainty–especially when we know the brain so often perceives the world incorrectly and that our intuitions are usually off by a wide margin.
 
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Absolutely NOBODY is claiming birds revolved from tyrannosauroids.
They are simply pointing out the close relationship.
About the same as humans to bats.
All share a COMMON ancestor tens of millions of years in the past. But there is NO direct ancestor-descendent relationship.
Tyrannosauroids went extinct, leaving NO (ZERO, ZIP) descendants. Same as if bats went extinct, we couldn't argue that because humans and apes are around, so are bats.
That is all.
Back to the monkey man.
 
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That is not what this article says:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_feathery_dino_2.html

Tyrannosaurids belong to a broader, diverse group of dinosaurs known as the coelurosaurs. Most paleontologists believe this group gave rise to birds. How this evolutionary change occurred is complex, Xu said. Large tyrannosaurids like T. rex were reportedly covered in scales instead of feathers, suggesting they were distantly related to birds.
 
That is exactly what the article says. Read the last sentence of what you just posted.
Coelurosaurs gave rise to birds. Tyrannosaurs are part of that group. Same as humans are part of the placental group along with elephants and whales. Tyrannosaurs are DISTANTLY related to birds same as you are to whales.
You're arguing something that is based on your misunderstanding of some basic phylogenetic concepts.
Tyrannosauroids are extinct.
They are not ancestral to birds.
No amount of reposting of articles that you're fundamentally misinterpreting will change that.
Look, here's a phylogeny of Coelurosauria:
I'm trying to be helpful, not rude.
ehupy9eb.jpg

Every single one of these groups except Aviale is extinct. They left no descendants.
This is a simple fact that any paleontologist would agree with.
 
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Jodie said:
That is not what this article says:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_feathery_dino_2.html

Tyrannosaurids belong to a broader, diverse group of dinosaurs known as the coelurosaurs. Most paleontologists believe this group gave rise to birds. How this evolutionary change occurred is complex, Xu said. Large tyrannosaurids like T. rex were reportedly covered in scales instead of feathers, suggesting they were distantly related to birds.
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The bolded sentence is referring to coelurosaurs, a larger group of which tyrannosaurids are part. That "broader, diverse group" of coelurosaurs may have given rise to birds, but tyrannos -- a distinct unit within the coeluros -- so far as is currently known, did not.

Earlier this year you ridiculed me for not understanding or having studied complex statistics, but here you are having trouble with fairly simple group and parts of a group relationships. The irony is not lost on me.
 
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