Big Foot
Bigfoot->Bigtalel
Critical Reasoning 1210
The Claim: The "weird" claim is that there is a population of large hairy "ape men" (a non-human missing link) that grow to be up to seven and a half feet tall that are known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch that live in the Northwest part of the United States. Bigfoot is a previously undiscovered creature that inhabits the Pacific Northwest of the United States and other various mountainous areas around the world but has never been conclusively proven to exist. My contention is that there is no such thing as Bigfoot and that there is no credible evidence for the existence of Bigfoot, furthermore I intend to show that the existence of Bigfoot is not the best explanation for what people may think they see. My claim is that Bigfoot does not exist and is most likely combinations of people carrying out hoaxes and people who want to believe being fooled by themselves. When I began my research I learned that there is an abundance of evidence out there for the existence of Bigfoot, there are numerous eyewitness accounts and some pictures of this elusive creature. Although there are many eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot and there are pictures that claim to be of Bigfoot I found that all of the evidence has the same thing in common. First, none of the eyewitness accounts have been corroborated by more then two people or all of the accounts came under some kind of emotional stress. Second, there are no clear reliable pictures that exist of Bigfoot. Even advocates who believe in Bigfoot have to admit that some of their evidence is very shaky.
Consider the following eyewitness account from nationalgeographic.com. Matt Moneymaker had been searching for Bigfoot for years. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive primate. "It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full," recalled Moneymaker. "Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away,
Critical Reasoning 1210
The Claim: The "weird" claim is that there is a population of large hairy "ape men" (a non-human missing link) that grow to be up to seven and a half feet tall that are known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch that live in the Northwest part of the United States. Bigfoot is a previously undiscovered creature that inhabits the Pacific Northwest of the United States and other various mountainous areas around the world but has never been conclusively proven to exist. My contention is that there is no such thing as Bigfoot and that there is no credible evidence for the existence of Bigfoot, furthermore I intend to show that the existence of Bigfoot is not the best explanation for what people may think they see. My claim is that Bigfoot does not exist and is most likely combinations of people carrying out hoaxes and people who want to believe being fooled by themselves. When I began my research I learned that there is an abundance of evidence out there for the existence of Bigfoot, there are numerous eyewitness accounts and some pictures of this elusive creature. Although there are many eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot and there are pictures that claim to be of Bigfoot I found that all of the evidence has the same thing in common. First, none of the eyewitness accounts have been corroborated by more then two people or all of the accounts came under some kind of emotional stress. Second, there are no clear reliable pictures that exist of Bigfoot. Even advocates who believe in Bigfoot have to admit that some of their evidence is very shaky.
Consider the following eyewitness account from nationalgeographic.com. Matt Moneymaker had been searching for Bigfoot for years. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive primate. "It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full," recalled Moneymaker. "Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away,
Bibliography: Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic News, October 23, 2003 National Geographic.com http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1023_031023_bigfoot.html W. H. Farenbach, Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (website) 2002 http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_FAQ.asp?id=584 Robert Todd Carroll, The Skeptics Dictionary 2003 http://www.skepdic.com/bigfoot.html Mark Chorvinsky, Strange Magazine 17, 1996 The Makeup Man and the Monster: John Chambers and the Patterson Bigfoot Suit. http://users.erols.com/strange1/chambers17.html The North American Science Institute Report, The story of the film. http://cryptozoo.monstrous.com/roger_patterson.htm Schick & Vaughn, How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, 3rd edition