[pct-l] Re; Bigfoot

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good afternoon, Michael,

I'll bet you don't believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Boggy-Man, or
the Tooth Fairy either.

Steel-Eye

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Michael S <michaels at skepticalraptor.com>wrote:

> Come on people, use science.  First of all, real science examines evidence
> and forms a hypothesis.  Bigfoot hunters have a hypothesis, and they try to
> find the evidence, without being objective and seeing what else the
> evidence might suggest.  You know, like finding footprints, and discovering
> that they don't meet any physiological gate, because the feet don't bend
> correctly.
>
> Since it's a logical fallacy to attempt to prove the negative (like
> someone saying that there's a teapot floating around the dark side of the
> moon...impossible to disprove, but of course, they can't prove it either).
>  As Carl Sagan once said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary
> evidence."   So let's just examine what would be required for me to stop
> being a skeptic:
>
> There is NO evidence of hominid species in the Americas prior to the
> invasions of Homo sapiens, approximately 13-50 thousand years ago.  If
> there were a giant hominid (or other hominid like species) in the area, we
> would have found fossils, since the assumption is that it's not extinct (at
> least those making those extraordinary claims).
> A viable breeding population in the northwest (from say northern
> California to British Columbia) would need to number in the 5-10 thousand
> range, unless they are apex predators, then it could be somewhat less.
>  Anything less, given the amount of space and how ALL hominids interact
> socially, anything lower than that would mean a non-breeding population,
> and none would exist anyways.
> Modern European settlement of the area (where populations skyrocketed)
> occurred around 150 years ago, so there should be a lot more interaction
> than even the mythmakers and scammers are stating.
> Where are the dead ones?  Though the area is wild, there are still people
> running around.  PCT thruhikers should stumble upon some evidence over the
> years.
> Google earth can pinpoint my car parked in the driveway.  The military has
> better satellites than that, and somewhere, someone would have seen
> something.
> Where is the evidence that is incontrovertible?  It's like what Neil
> deGrasse Tyson says about alien visitors–why haven't they accidentally left
> a communicator?  A toilet?  A lost glove?  Because they're not.
>
> Even if they are highly intelligent apes, they can't hide their fossils
> and other evidence.  They just don't exist, but as opposed to the sasquatch
> "believers", I'm open-minded to real evidence.  It is more closeminded to
> ignore evidence and accept a myth.
>
> Michael
>
>