I can offer general points that apply to any discussion of an often-sensitive subject. The key one is recognising that people tend to have some kind of reason for believing what they do, that isn’t just to be annoying and awkward in internet discussions.

Sometimes people really are just stupid, and have a set of beliefs that are inconsistent, ill-founded and generally nonsensical. Such people can often be picked out by their use of all-caps and frequent reference to how you’re going to “brn in hel, fabulous personget” if you disagree with them. These types are inimical to sensible discussion and should be ignored, or dealt with by use of extreme sarcasm. It won’t make the slightest impact on them, but it can be fun to poke them and see what happens if you like that kind of thing.

I’d hope more commonly, people are not pants-on-head very special, and do have their reasons… I seem to have spent more time talking about the retards than I intended to, it was just a fun subject, but anyway… first step is trying to understand why it is that people hold the beliefs they do, without jumping to the “brainwashed/dumb****” conclusion, that way you can at least speak about their actual beliefs instead of taking a guess then insulting them when you tell them all the ways that their reasons are wrong without mentioning any of the reasons they actually have.

Easier to do in a private conversation than a public discussion.

This post is longer in every way than I set out to make it, I get verbose when I’m tired…