The most difficult thing to accept for people who work hard at forming their beliefs on the basis of evidence is that not everyone forms their belief… - Peter Boghossian

Faith taints or at worst removes our curiosity about the world, what we should value, and what type of life we should lead. [...] Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence.

To argue that people need faith is to abandon hope, and to condescend and accuse the faithful of being incapable of understanding the importance of reason and rationality. There are better and worse ways to come to terms with death, to find strength during times of crisis, to make meaning and purpose in our lives, to interpret our sense of awe and wonder, and to contribute to human well-being— and the faithful are completely capable of understanding and achieving this.

Most basic elements of civil discussion, especially over matters of substantive disagreement, come down to a single theme: making the other person in a conversation a partner, not an adversary. To accomplish this, you need to understand what you want from the conversation, make charitable assumptions about others' intentions, listen, and seek back-and-forth interaction (as opposed to delivering a message).