People come by their beliefs through many means but one of the most influential and hardest to fight are the ones conditioned from birth. Putting people down does not allow for reasonable discussion. Measured response can open the door to someone's mind.
Honesty is important. We don't have all the answers. Say so when you need. And when confronted with illogic point out their lack of proof and that lack of proof is not a truth unto itself.
Elections measure popularity, and to some extent collective values, but can't tell us facts about the world. To evaluate specific policies, governments should rely more on local initiative (federalism), controlled experiments (scientocracy), or prediction markets (futarchy).
Biases in perception, probability estimation, and ethical decision-making all threaten our ability to make choices consistent with our values. For example, the availability heuristic combines with omission bias to fuel the anti-vaccination movement.
We owe it to the future of mankind to be good to one another so we can have a healthy, prosperous society where we can continue to use the scientific method to improve our lives by discovering the unknown and creating a better way of life.