Many Sunni Muslims assume a Hadith is true if it is labeled as Sahih (authentic). So, irrespective of how absurd or contradictory to logic, reason, morality, or even the Quran a Hadith is, they will blindly accept such narrations if they are marked as Sahih.
This lack of discretion is particularly alarming because even the most imminent Hadith scholars disputed with each other regarding which Hadith should be deemed Sahih or not.
Two of the most revered Hadith Scholars among Sunni Muslims are Bukhari (d. 265 AH) and his student Muslim (d. 261 AH), yet they had different requirements for which Hadith they considered Sahih. For example, Bukhari believed that for a hadith to be considered “ muttasil” (connected), it had to be proven that both the person who transmitted the tradition and the one who received it were living at the same time and had met each other. On the other hand, Muslim disagreed with this condition. Muslim believed that it was sufficient for the transmitter and recipient to have lived in the same time period, even if they hadn’t necessarily met. In Sahih Muslim, if a narration didn’t meet this criterion, Bukhari would reject it as “ Sahih” (authentic) and consider it “ maqtu” (with a broken chain in transmission). This means he would not accept it as a reliable source of information. 1
Abu Hanifa (d. 120 AH), the founder of the Hanafi Fiqh (school of law), required the people transmitting in a chain to have met and transmitted the Hadith, heard the hadith by the narrator with his own ears, and fully remembered it. 2
Furthermore, besides the difference in their criteria, there were transmitters whom Muslim considered unreliable but Bukhari trusted, and vice versa, where Bukhari found some transmitters trustworthy while Muslim did not. The Hadith scholar Al-Hakim listed 625 transmitters of Hadith whose narrations were accepted by Muslim but rejected by al-Bukhari. 3 Alternatively, Bukhari exclusively narrated from 435 transmitters whom Muslim did not transmit because he did not consider them reliable. 4
Ibn Hajar, who wrote a highly respected commentary of Sahih al-Bukhari, titled Fath al-Bari questioned the authenticity of 110 of Bukhari’s narrations. He said, “The number of these [criticized hadiths] in Bukhari’s book is 110, some of which Muslim also included: Muslim included 32 of these hadiths while Bukhari exclusively narrated 78 hadiths.” 6 Ibn al-Jawzi downgraded a number of traditions included in Sahih Bukhari and Muslim as hasan (good) and even daif (weak), not to speak of other compilations. 7 This includes the Hadith regarding the height of Adam being 60 cubits tall and all humans since then getting progressively shorter. 8