Moderated Bigfoot- Anybody Seen one?

[Jodie]

Yes, you wrote about how important it is or was for you. What I am trying to point is how much you invested on it and how little substance it has, how weak it actually is.

Bear, wanderer, a fabrication. There's no way to actually know what it was. We know, however, one of the things it was not- bigfoot.

That is true Correa, it's really the only way to look at it reasonably. Reason and how you feel are two different things though, it will take me awhile to work it through but since everyone is dead now, it really doesn't matter.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I don't understand the prickly reception Jodie's had here at the JREF.

Ad homs didn't help. The cavalier dismissal of sincere answers also didn't help, and that led a number to the belief it was just trolling.

Probably took me 25 years to finally acknowledge my atheism.

Well, you beat me there! One of the problems is the overwhelming social/cultural pressures around us. My coaches, my family, my pastors, and even some of my favorite strippers. If your atheism is going to cost you a stripper - that's the kind of sacrifice a person has to think long and hard about.

ABP, I enjoy your talent for picking apart language and inferring motivation. Do you acknowledge that some people really do believe in bigfoot because they think the evidence points that way, or do you think all the sane folk expressing that belief are being manipulative about it? I think there are a lot more "dupe-ees" than "dupe-ers" in bigfootery. Do you agree?

What the literature teaches us is that there is an observational equivalence between the con-man who does not believe and the person who believes, and is using the exact same tactics to protect themselves from harm. We call them "defense mechanisms" in that context.

Jane Goodall said she wanted to believe because of the romance in having a "cousin" running wild and free, despite not having looked into it herself seriously. I think she speaks for a large percentage of people with the same casual acquaintance with the subject.

So these are people the literature would classify as having a cherished belief they wish to protect, and will trot out the logical fallacies they have heard to defend bigfoot's existence. But if they are engaged in a protracted argument with a skeptic, that belief is going to fall because it does not mean enough to them to over-ride the onslaught from the skeptic.

If a person goes beyond that casual romantic belief though and has a personal stake in it for some reason, despite being a logical person otherwise - they'll fight much harder to avoid whatever personal harm they perceive will come as a consequence of admitting they are wrong. Some have put Merldumb in that category, that he has too much to lose. I don't. But reasonable people can disagree on that.

All the argumentation these categories of people use is manipulative but without malice. That is why they call them "defense mechanisms".
These people, and yes they constitute the majority, especially since the popularization with shows like "finding bigfoot" - they are using manipulative tactics but without the intention of harm to others.

The Roger Pattersons and Matt Moneymakers et al. are of course pure con-men. Their intention is to perpetrate fraud. Those without financial motive still achieve a great deal of personal satisfaction exercising control over others. They look down on them as inferiors and get a big kick out of duping them. But the tactics are exactly the same - selective attention/inattention, evasion, diversion, begging the question, etc.

A troll will use all the same tactics too, and appears on JREF with the intention of getting everyone pissed off. The crowning glory for the troll is to get a member so angry he gets banned. The troll doesn't believe any of the arguments he is using, and isn't trying to convince anyone that bigfoot exists. He's just malicious.

So that brings us back to Jodie. It is very difficult to distinguish between someone who is protecting a cherished belief from a malicious troll because they are going to use all the same tactics. One can be protecting the personal image of her dear but allegedly wimpy father and the other is yanking people's chains for fun. (I say allegedly because IMHO he is the one who dislodged the RR ties).

And in both cases you are going to have the appearance of progress, followed by regression, followed by progress because the clever troll lives far longer and does much more damage by not being a universally offensive jerk that people recognize too easily. The polished chain-yanker will give you a little sop now and then to hook you into three more pages of insincere debate.

I had to just stop interacting because I perceive myself as having entered into the "liability to forum" status. My life was so harmed by maliciously manipulative people that it clouds my judgement. I have a real loathing for it. She's had a lot more exposure to it than just this little bigfoot story too, so it is pretty clear to me I'd just keep picking apart posts out of my fixation on the subject.

 

[I Am He]

Yes, when you remove the emotional connection, or trust factor out of it, step back, look at this like you never heard the story before it doesn't add up to bigfoot.

It actually makes me angry because if I were a parent and my son told me this story I would have handled the situation a lot differently. It's almost negligent IMO in the way it got pushed off onto a myth. I never bothered to look at it from that perspective before, I just took it on faith that they knew what they were talking about.

Did it ever cross your mind that they might have been just pulling your leg?


I Am He

 

[AttorneyTom]

Well.. it seems like it might be time to put some closure to "The Mississippi Muscadine Incident of 1932" ?

 

[LTC8K6]

http://news.discovery.com/animals/f...rlds-rarest-gorilla-120508.html#mkcpgn=hknws1

An extraordinary new video reveals the first camera trap footage of the Cross River gorilla, the world's rarest gorilla.

Still no sasquatch though...

 

[Castro]

I don't understand the prickly reception Jodie's had here at the JREF.

From where I sit, she's answered questions honestly and acknowledged where her biases led her to build belief on the flimsiest of evidence. I wouldn't expect someone like Jodie to do a complete 180 on her lifelong bigfoot belief just because she came to the JREF and someone wrote something that was a convincing logical argument against bigfoot belief. She's already seen those arguments on the BFF - I know 'cause I'm one of the people writing them! Dislodging a long-held belief in something is a process, not an event. Probably took me 25 years to finally acknowledge my atheism.

ABP, I enjoy your talent for picking apart language and inferring motivation. Do you acknowledge that some people really do believe in bigfoot because they think the evidence points that way, or do you think all the sane folk expressing that belief are being manipulative about it? I think there are a lot more "dupe-ees" than "dupe-ers" in bigfootery. Do you agree?

I'm not sure it's accurate to compare bigfootery with religion in that case (except if it is paranormal bigfootery?).

The belief in bigfoot is based on things that believers consider as scientific evidences (Patty, tracks, sightings...).I think that if a believer understand that the evidences are false, abandoning his belief must not be such a big deal.
I concede that to make it on a skeptics forum is not the easiest way.

A religious belief is based on a dogma that the believer accept as it is (the existence of God, act of creation...). He doesn't need any evidence at all. As there is no way to prove a dogma wrong (AFAIK), abandoning a religious belief must be much more difficult and request at least, a deep introspection.

PS: I appreciate ABP's posts too.

 

[GT/CS]

I'm not sure it's accurate to compare bigfootery with religion in that case (except if it is paranormal bigfootery?).

The belief in bigfoot is based on things that believers consider as scientific evidences (Patty, tracks, sightings...).I think that if a believer understand that the evidences are false, abandoning his belief must not be such a big deal.
I concede that to make it on a skeptics forum is not the easiest way.

A religious belief is based on a dogma that the believer accept as it is (the existence of God, act of creation...). He doesn't need any evidence at all. As there is no way to prove a dogma wrong (AFAIK), abandoning a religious belief must be much more difficult and request at least, a deep introspection.

PS: I appreciate ABP's posts too.

It's been my observation that devout bigfoot believers use those items to justify their belief, but they are not necessarily the cause of the belief.

 

[AttorneyTom]

It's been my observation that devout bigfoot believers use those items to justify their belief, but they are not necessarily the cause of the belief.

In this case it would seem that those causes were a deep seeded earlier and repetitious family story of an "event" .. that perhaps coupled with the " BF phenomenon" period of the late 60's and early 70's and the preteen/early teen age of Jodie ?

Has Anyone seen Braves Fan around ?

 

[Jodie]

Did it ever cross your mind that they might have been just pulling your leg?


I Am He

No, because I heard the story regurgitated from several different family members over the years when it came up. If they were pulling my leg, they had themselves convinced too.

There really is more to it than just this story, this is a deeply ingrained belief in the existence of "shadow people" or "woollyboogers", as they were called back then before the name bigfoot came into popular usage. The stories go back at least to the time of the civil war. I was absolutely convinced that these stories were true.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Has Anyone seen Braves Fan around ?

Banned.

 

[AttorneyTom]

It's been my observation that devout bigfoot believers use those items to justify their belief, but they are not necessarily the cause of the belief.

Banned.

I am sorry to hear that.

 

[rockinkt]

<snip>
The Roger Pattersons and Matt Moneymakers et al. are of course pure con-men. Their intention is to perpetrate fraud.
<snip>

An exceptional job of explaining exactly how to tell the goats from the sheep.
I only quoted the above because I think it is insulting to leave a master of Bigfoot cons - Bill Munns - unnamed.

 

[Castro]

It's been my observation that devout bigfoot believers use those items to justify their belief, but they are not necessarily the cause of the belief.

You are probably right but I would say that, at the very best, bigfootery is at religion what paintball is at war.

 

[The Shrike]

The belief in bigfoot is based on things that believers consider as scientific evidences . . .
A religious belief is based on a dogma that the believer accept as it is (the existence of God, act of creation...). He doesn't need any evidence at all.

Agreed, but I see broad overlap in the mental constructs people make to prop up either belief. The hard core 'footers, like the religious, contort the evidence to fit their belief system. They aren't interested at all in determining the reality of their beliefs. Everything is filtered through the lens of their worldview.

Engage in some evaluation of purported bigfoot evidence with SweatyYeti or Muldur, then please report back to us on how willing they were to abandon their bigfoot belief when you politely illustrated for them that the evidence supporting their belief is unreliable.

Another weird religious parallel is the high proportion of bigfoot believers for whom bigfoot IS part of their religious belief system. For example, there seems to be a higher-than-expected proportion of Mormons among the bigfoot faithful. Their tradition is consider bigfoots to be descendants of the biblical Cain. Regular, plain-old fundies might consider bigfoots to be the nephilim. Now, of course, bigfoot is intricately woven into modern interpretations of Native American religions, e.g., seeing a bigfoot is a sign of great spiritual significance to the "witness."

 

[Jodie]

Another weird religious parallel is the high proportion of bigfoot believers for whom bigfoot IS part of their religious belief system. For example, there seems to be a higher-than-expected proportion of Mormons among the bigfoot faithful. Their tradition is consider bigfoots to be descendants of the biblical Cain. Regular, plain-old fundies might consider bigfoots to be the nephilim. Now, of course, bigfoot is intricately woven into modern interpretations of Native American religions, e.g., seeing a bigfoot is a sign of great spiritual significance to the "witness."

I had heard the biblical references before but wasn't aware a lot of bigfoot proponents were Mormons.

As far as the Nephilim are concerned, I'ld heard a new theory a couple of years ago that this is what people were calling the Neandertal when we co- existed together in Israel.

Bigfoot world does have some aspects of cultism IMO, in that there is a push to control the popular opinion of what bigfoot should be among the proponents. They will turn on the ones that "discredit" the belief, yet I've seen some of those same beliefs become accepted over time without evidence.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

I'm not sure it's accurate to compare bigfootery with religion in that case (except if it is paranormal bigfootery?).

The belief in bigfoot is based on things that believers consider as scientific evidences (Patty, tracks, sightings...).I think that if a believer understand that the evidences are false, abandoning his belief must not be such a big deal.
I concede that to make it on a skeptics forum is not the easiest way.

A religious belief is based on a dogma that the believer accept as it is (the existence of God, act of creation...). He doesn't need any evidence at all. As there is no way to prove a dogma wrong (AFAIK), abandoning a religious belief must be much more difficult and request at least, a deep introspection.

PS: I appreciate ABP's posts too.

With the absence of any realistic evidence for Bigfoot or God, i'd say Bigfootery and religion have a lot in common, in that they both require vast amounts of faith (stupidity) to keep on buying it.

 

[tsig]

No, because I heard the story regurgitated from several different family members over the years when it came up. If they were pulling my leg, they had themselves convinced too.

There really is more to it than just this story, this is a deeply ingrained belief in the existence of "shadow people" or "woollyboogers", as they were called back then before the name bigfoot came into popular usage. The stories go back at least to the time of the civil war. I was absolutely convinced that these stories were true.

Looks like the story is changing right before our eyes.

 

[GT/CS]

I had heard the biblical references before but wasn't aware a lot of bigfoot proponents were Mormons.

As far as the Nephilim are concerned, I'ld heard a new theory a couple of years ago that this is what people were calling the Neandertal when we co- existed together in Israel.

Bigfoot world does have some aspects of cultism IMO, in that there is a push to control the popular opinion of what bigfoot should be among the proponents. They will turn on the ones that "discredit" the belief, yet I've seen some of those same beliefs become accepted over time without evidence.

That's why it's so much fun to watch the "bigfoot is human' DNA soap opera. The 'footers high priest (Meldrum) finally had to step in to try to put a stop to it, and he'll probably be successful, so by this time next year the staus quo should be reestablished.

 

[DennyT]

That's why it's so much fun to watch the "bigfoot is human' DNA soap opera. The 'footers high priest (Meldrum) finally had to step in to try to put a stop to it, and he'll probably be successful, so by this time next year the staus quo should be reestablished.

You are probably correct. I am surprised that Ketchum has not published her data somewhere, which would have given her a foothold, and created a long-lasting schism within the cult. That she hasn't published tells me is that there probably hasn't been any real provenance hoaxing involved, of the type that I had envisioned. Without fakery of that type, I can't see any journal publishing it as a positive study. She apparently was over-confident, and tried for some high-powered journals, which was never going to fly, instead of going for some rag publication. Had she done that, she really had a potential goldmine there.

But I think that her window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Very few of the footers really bought into the idea that bigfoot is human, as judged by the posts at BFF. They kept believing that what Ketchum had was something wildly new, non-human. Which of course she doesn't. And now the crowd is pretty sophisticated about DNA, and it would be a bit harder to fool them. Not to mention journal editors and reviewers: I would guess that the Sykes announcement has stimulated considerable discussion, and that Ketchum's work is no longer under the radar. Of course, that might help her get published in a lesser journal, but I doubt she would be able to get away with publishing anything other than a 'negative study' paper. That is, she could probably publish a paper that said, all we found were known animals and some humans.

So if this projection is correct, and human DNA never gets off the ground, and Sykes publishes his negative study, what will account of the lack of Bigfoot DNA? I suppose Meldrum will just revert to the old saws of "rarity", "elusiveness," "lost airplanes in the pacific northwest" and perhaps some new excuse eg BF uses latex gloves.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

It is common to give them too much credit. If you ask what a top-flight scientist would do to hoax bigfoot DNA then you get the scenario of the remote aboriginal tribe mutants parted out for sequencing. But when you ask an F-rated business that is notorious for not producing results - you get the same "no result" the customers of the lab did. If she can't report mundane results to the owner of a Cocker Spaniel then publishing in a peer-reviewed journal is out of the question.