Here’s an odd question:  how many people here believe in the potential existence of things like bigfoot, yeti or the loch ness monster?  just wondering.

The potential? In what sense? Clearly these things are physically possible, it’s just that there’s no good evidence for their existence, and never has been.

I’ve never really understood the need some people have to believe in something even when there is no evidence for it. Its certainly acceptable to say we can’t completely rule it out, but you can say that about the flying spaghetti monster too, yet for some reason the flying spaghetti monster never makes it on the cover of the national enquirer or the history channel. There are even some photos of the FSM that are every bit as convincing as the loch ness monster images and yeti photos.

I’m sure you would like an exhaustive, and carefully considered and nuanced answer to your question, so I’ll give you one.  No!

Occam

If you have a animal, you have feces and there should be some coprolite. No one has every found any, nor a bone or a hair/scale. When you think about the number that would be needed for a breeding population, we should have evidence of one of these items.
Otherwise, no, I don’t believe they exist.

skuld - 11 March 2009 08:48 AM

Here’s an odd question:  how many people here believe in the potential existence of things like bigfoot, yeti or the loch ness monster?  just wondering.

When I was a little kid, I really wanted for these things to be true. I recall begging my father to order me the Time-Life book series I saw on TV, on bigfoot, loch ness monster, witches, UFOs, etc. So my father ordered them for me, and then as each one came in the series (in the mail every few weeks) we sat down and he read it with me.

He would critique all of the so called “evidence” by asking me questions that would lead me to ask my own questions or begin to doubt the story. He’d say “Gee, don’t you think that looks an awful lot like a frisbee, instead of a flying saucer? What do YOU think? If you wanted to make a pretend UFO, how would you do it?” Then we would make pretend UFOs out of pie tins and photograph them in the backyard, after flinging them in the air, trying to recreate the shots.

There were many books in the series. By the time the last of the books came in the mail, I was looking forward to sitting down with my dad and picking apart the evidence for myself. Happy memories with my dad, learning not to take things at face value.

I still have that entire Time-Life book series on my bookshelf - every volume. The series looks very odd amongst all my Dawkins, Sagan, and other books. But I’d never be rid of the series, it’s very special to me. My son enjoys reading them with me now, just like I did with my father.

I don’t have much to add, except that Jules, you had a very cool dad. I wish all fathers could be like that with their kids.

I surmise from your post that you love[d] and respect[ed] your dad very much. You are lucky. I hope your dad is still living, but if not I’m sure your memories of him are special and warm.

If your kids feel that way about you, then no matter your opinions, I admire you as a parent because it’s just about the hardest job in the world. And getting harder.

Thanks for sharing that with us. It gives some hope to a hopeless cynic like me.

Thanks, Omni. We lost Dad last year. But yes, I did have a great love and respect for him. I am trying to raise my son the same way, as I can not only give him the same experience that I had as a child, but also relive some of the fond memories I had. I must say that his parenting method was not foolproof, as my sister is into loopy new-age medicine and psychics, and my brother is a born again Christian - LOL. But then again, they were never interested in pouring over books with Dad as I always was. We had a special bond.

Writing this post prompted me to pull one of those old books off my shelf when I got home. It’s the Time-Life “Mysteries of the Unknown” series. It came out 22 years ago. Neat, I googled it and found there is a brief Wikipedia entry on the series! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysteries_of_the_Unknown. My favorite in the series was “Mysterious Creatures” which I have in front of me now. Not only did it include bigfoot and ‘nessie’ but it also had other mythical creatures like the manticore, kraken, hydra, etc. It also included real creatures such as the giant squid, the komodo dragon, etc. Dad and I would compare the mythical creatures to the real ones, and talk about where legends came from. For example, the unicorn legend is thought by some to be tales of rhinoceros brought home by travelers.

I feel it is certainly possible that there are mysterious creatures out in the world that we have never seen before, but unfortunately I don’t think they will end up being as exciting as my childhood imagination wanted them to be. For now, I’m quite fascinated with and satisfied with the new species of ‘regular animals’ being discovered. I’ve found that some real species are just as amazing as the fictional type.