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Notes -
I would hope that anyone on this board has more nuanced views than 'many others' on their side.
Not just because we're supposed to be smart and thoughtful, but because 'many others' is such an inane standard in the modern world. It could refer to a collection of a few dozen tweets from anonymous posters, it could refer to some clickbait article writer being provocative for pageviews, it could refer to some idiot politician with no knowledge of the subject repeating slogans for votes, etc.
I think if we accept those weakman versions of our opponent's arguments as the correct thing to engage with and argue against, or especially as in this case if we assign those weakman views to the entire other 'side', we're both committing an intellectual sin, and making any possibility of discussion and learning impossible and pointless.
Also, more to the point: OP wasn't just saying 'some people in the world exist who believe this', they were using that as a framing to make an empirical argument that their beliefs were correct and the other side's were wrong.
If you just want to sneer at the other side or describe why you hate them, pointing at their weakmen and how annoying/dangerous they are is fine.
If you want to argue that your beliefs are right and theirs are wrong, then you absolutely have to engage with the strongest possible arguments in favor of their beliefs, or else you've demonstrated nothing at all.
Point taken, on the whole.
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