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thomblake comments on Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale - Less Wrong
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Although I agree with the general thrust of your statement, I cannot forgive the incorrect subargument, "It's worse than being religious."
But yes, definitely: atheists should aspire to be skillful, competent, elegant, logical rude jerks. Those of our kind with the rare talent not to be rude jerks could aspire to that part too.
I'm not sure how you could misconstrue that as an argument - it's a single proposition!
If it's not obvious, consider that they're rejecting a commonly-held belief for a really bad reason. That's practically insane. Much better to go along with the crowd until you have an actual reason not to.
And I think being neither rude nor a jerk is vital to being a complete person. You're setting the bar way too low.
Just because they say "the idea of a talking snake is ridiculous!" does not mean that they rely solely on the absurdity heuristic. After all, they got the correct answer.
"Do not criticize people when they turn out to be right! Wait for an occasion where they are wrong! Otherwise you are missing the chance to see when someone is thinking smarter than you"
If you suspect someone is relying too heavily on the absurdity heuristic, there are absurd things that are true that you can test them on. If you're talking about "the average atheist" and don't have time to test a representitive sample, I would not assume that the absurdity heuristic is all they got going for them.
I'd think the majority, if not nearly all atheists see (some of) the biases that lead to religious beliefs. "All your stated reasons for belief are worthless and shared with the majority, and your claim is absurd" is probably enough to discount the majority.
There's also such a thing as being fair - epistemic justice. That plea can only be made by showing a poor criticism of Them and comparing it to a poor criticism of Us.
thomblake:
I also agree with the post's assertion that relying on the absurdity heuristic alone is dangerous ground, it is still an excellent tool for at least calling in to question a set of beliefs which, upon further and more rigorous examination, may or may not merit rejection.
But, I must protest, a talking snake is not "a really bad reason" to reject that set of common beliefs. It is an EXCELLENT reason.
Snakes do not talk.