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Notes -
I'll start by noting I was probably editing in additional paragraphs of how validity interacts with trust in the time you replied. I will let that stand as a general point.
You are arguing against a(nother) claim that was not made. There is no argument or claim that the atheist is 'more likely' to be someone who engages in arguments as soldiers than a co-religionist. There is not even a claim that it is worse when they do.
The athiest, however, is engaging in arguments as soldiers when they make an argument from a basis they do not believe valid, and attempting to have the other people act to their preference as if it were.
Arguments as soldiers, in turn, is a strategy with a spectrum of applications. There are egregious abuses of it, and there are unremarkable utilizations of it.
Where a particular instance of arguments as soldiers resides matters in some ways, but in other ways does not for the point of whether it decreases validity. The introduction of the variable itself changes the warranted level of faith in good faith to be taken as default, and compounding context- such as reason to believe the person is engaging in the argument in bad faith- magnifies the impact.
If they were prioritizing logical validity, they wouldn't be making the argument from (religious) faith that the meme pre-supposes they find illogical.
This, in turn, doesn't require to know what the specific argument is, merely the nature of the argument and the arguer. If parts of this are known in advance- such as knowing the atheist is an atheist- all the better.
I will also turn back to the earlier post I provided, which itself ties the Boy Who Cried Wolf part of the previous post about why personal credibility / intent matters for validity.
In a context-less vacuum, the meme Atheist and the Christian do not necessarily have oppositional goals. This is why the meme works as a meme- it's unspecific and vague enough to allow the viewer to assume their own interpretation that is more innocuous to their preferences.
For example, their desires could be orthogonal or even overlapping, like Christian wants to spend charity in way A, like supporting widows, and Atheist wants way B, say orphans. Atheist using an appeal to religion in shaping the shared priority might still be a case of arguments as soldiers, but it doesn't challenge the basis of faith in good faith in the way a more hostile demand might. As a result, the Christian comes off as more unreasonable for such a tepid contradiction.
But there are Atheists who might not be interested in orthogonal co-existence, but active obstruction or even harm. If this were the case, and this was known, then the recognition of arguments as soldiers does considerable harm to the validity of that Atheist's arguments. They would- appropriately, rationally- not be warranted the sort of external faith that they are engaging in good faith, since good faith is at odds with a pre-commitment/desire to negate other good-faith actors.
And this leads back to the meme being raised in the context of anti-ICE actors. There are anti-ICE actors who are orthogonal actors who just want more effective immigration enforcement. There are also anti-ICE actors who are directly oppositional to immigration enforcement categorically, even if they try to deny such because it would discredit their public validity. An orthogonal actor may propose a change on the belief that it will actually make for more effective, and be willing to not only implement said compromise but also change it if that change does not actually meet their claimed priority of improving effectiveness. A directly oppositional actor may advance the same change with the expectation/intention of deliberately foiling the implementation and resulting in a decrease in immigration enforcement.
One is a possibly valid way to improve immigration enforcement, and one is an invalid way. How does one evaluate the validity of whether the anti-ICE proposer is proposing a valid improvement to enforcing immigration?
Well, it helps if the previously identify themselves as categorically opposed to the validity of immigration enforcement, and thus warrants low social faith-based validity, much as it helps the meme Christian to know that the aetheist categorically does not believe in the religion, and does not merit social faith-based validity. In the meme, the atheist is clear. In the United States, the disband ICE types are unclear... not least because only a few years ago the same general coalition had the defund the police movement, with similar dynamics.
The "I don't believe this but you do" is a form of "If you believe premise A and premise B then behavior C doesn't fit." This forum often engages in this towards the left. And while often the person using this logic is bad at modeling the thoughts of the group they're applying it to, that's not inherently a problem with the form of argument.
"Arguments as soldiers" is a way to make attempts at persuasion sound nefarious. Of course they are attempting to persuade you! It isn't a secret. It's a nihilistic world view that frames the world as two sides, and one is pre-committed to always defect you no matter what you will do, but wants to see if you are a sucker who will cooperate. You can never earn their respect, never reach some sort of compromise, therefore the correct response is maximum fuck you. I won't say such a person would never possibly exist, but it treats the extreme as the norm. It's also self-fulfilling, because viewed from the opposite side you literally are playing defect bot.
The existence of people who have contradicting goals is not some new phenomenon, it's the norm of society. Regardless of what other people do, you should hold to your own values. This is the right's version of the left's "bad faith" exemption. The left loves this similar game - "We stand for tolerance but by having a limitless definition of harm we can shun you and still be tolerant!" Now it's "If the enemy tries to use our values against us that gives us license to never consider whether the accusation is correct!" The atheist vs Christian context of the meme is rather ironic - at the risk of being the atheist in the meme, I'm still fairly confident that Jesus' big thing was being so committed to his own values that he'd let the opponent "win" thereby convincing the opposition of his righteousness.
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