This is perfectly true. But it doesn’t much matter, because the point here is that when these people reject the idea of evolution, for these kind of reasons, they use feelings of “absurdity” as a metric—without critically assessing the reasons why they feel that way.
The point here isnt that the lady was using sound and rational reasoning skills. The contention is that her style of reasoning was something a rationalist shouldn’t want to use—and that it was something the author no longer wants to use in their own thinking.
The point was to compare a religious believer saying “evolution sounds absurd” to a rationalist saying “talking snakes sound absurd”. But the situations are not comparable. The religious believer only claims that evolution sounds absurd because he applies different standards for absurdity to things that contradict his religion and things which don’t. The rationalist claims that talking snakes sound absurd using consistent standards (though not the same standards as the religious believer).
This is perfectly true. But it doesn’t much matter, because the point here is that when these people reject the idea of evolution, for these kind of reasons, they use feelings of “absurdity” as a metric—without critically assessing the reasons why they feel that way.
The point here isnt that the lady was using sound and rational reasoning skills. The contention is that her style of reasoning was something a rationalist shouldn’t want to use—and that it was something the author no longer wants to use in their own thinking.
The point was to compare a religious believer saying “evolution sounds absurd” to a rationalist saying “talking snakes sound absurd”. But the situations are not comparable. The religious believer only claims that evolution sounds absurd because he applies different standards for absurdity to things that contradict his religion and things which don’t. The rationalist claims that talking snakes sound absurd using consistent standards (though not the same standards as the religious believer).