@Meow Mix Wow, so much to digest there! I'm forced to respond by only quoting specific parts due to the character limit, but thankfully, this shouldn't be an issue in this thread because it's clear each post is a response to the one preceding it.
So I was hot when I was barging into these chatrooms, this teen girl, armed only with the self-assurance that I had found something right, it was unassailable. Then, I encountered something I never expected: rather than scorn and ridicule (though there was some, deservedly), there were those with echoes of the infinite patience of my father willing to talk to me: not just argue with me, but communicate to me. Little by little, they peeled back the layers and showed me that I didn't have everything figured out after all; and importantly, not to be afraid about that.
I think you've made a crucial observation in your post that, even though others can definitely help us change, it is ultimately innate openness to discussion and differing ideas that distinguishes between someone who changes and someone who stays stuck to the same way of thinking while refusing to consider any alternative at all. This, of course, doesn't take away one bit of the significance that traits such as patience, willingness to discuss, and honesty could have in inspiring someone to change; it merely highlights that innate open-mindedness is important as well.
A few months ago, I started being more active on an ex-religious Discord server that I had joined months earlier without having much of a chance to participate on (due to having been in the army at the time). Bit by bit, I became more familiar with most of the active members, and I finally decided to join some of the political discussions on there.
As it turned out, that was largely a mistake, mainly because of my choice of who to engage: there were several members--a few extremist leftists and a few extremist conservatives--whose only purpose from the discussions seemed to be to "prove" others wrong rather than share perspectives or reach others to communicate with them in the manner you outlined. Two of them felt justified in openly insulting their debate opponents and calling them names because, and I'm quoting one of them verbatim here, "People who express uncivil views deserve no civility."
While I can see how that statement would apply to, say, some nazi who walked into a discussion only to espouse hatred and nothing else, the situation is often much more nuanced and less one-dimensional than this with the majority of people. The biggest irony in all of this was the fact that the person who said that used to be a fascist themselves. When I asked them whether they believed people should have treated them the way they now justified treating everyone else who they believed had questionable beliefs, they said they were "not responsible for showing civility to bigots."
To my mind, the most important metric by far in whether or not someone deserves patience, civility, and friendliness is whether or not they, as you said, are willing to entertain differing ideas and be open to discussion. After all, like both of us, many progressives also used to have anti-scientific or deeply hateful beliefs. That doesn't necessarily mean someone is a bad person--although sometimes it does, of course--but it means that various factors such as indoctrination, education, economic class, cultural background, and social conditions are too powerful and too complex to be reduced to the "bad beliefs equal a bad person" trope.
Which brings me to an example of a change in my life, albeit a more recent one (from the last several months): my experiences in the army and with people I met on that server and later befriended in person have made me much more patient and less caustic. I would say "less angry," but anger wasn't precisely how I felt before said experiences; it was more like suppressed, dull bitterness and frustration. I was anti-religious in a rather forceful and generalizing way, inclined to almost entirely despise entire cultures due to the struggles I had (and still have) with religious bigotry in my society. Amid this turmoil of social isolation, frustration, and inability to truly be myself with the vast majority of people in my everyday life, I took refuge in anti-religious sentiment and sought a sense of belonging among then-similarly minded people.
When I joined the army, however, it became clearer than ever to me that people's social, economic, and educational conditions are the primary factors in shaping up people's worldviews and priorities. I met fellow conscripts who had to drop out of school to financially support their families, leading to a longer and harsher conscription period than mine. I also met others who, despite being far more religious than some of their peers, managed to develop strong bonds with people from markedly different backgrounds due to shared struggles during service.
A vivid memory I have is from when I sat down one afternoon with a fellow conscript during a break and started chatting with him about what he wanted to do after service. This was one of the friendliest and most candid people I met there, but he was also pretty conservative--he openly went along with the prevalent, routine homophobia and sexism of many of the other people who were around us there, for example. He never went to school because he couldn't focus enough on education and needed to work and financially help his family as soon as he could. His service period was three years because he had no degree, whereas mine was only one year.
When I asked him what he wanted to do most after service, he said, "I want to learn how to read and write." I simply paused for almost half a minute and didn't know what to say. I also had such a moment of clarity that it later became something of a philosophical reference for me. What should we, or anyone else, expect someone like that guy to believe? It's easy to demonize those like him as "ignorant," "bigoted," or whatever insult to their intellect you can think of, but when his biggest wish was merely to be literate after a whole social and economic system had failed him, how could anyone possibly blame him for how he ended up? And more importantly, how many others end up in suboptimal conditions or with harmful beliefs through no fault of their own?
And he wasn't the only one in such a situation either. Another conscript who had never been to school once asked me to explain to him how computers and smartphones worked when he found out I had a degree in comouter science, and he was noticeably curious to understand such things. However, due to his family's situation, he also had to skip school.
These experiences would later come to mind again more than once when I tried to discuss various issues on the Discord server with the extremist leftist I mentioned above. Even though they loved talking about Marxism and how material conditions were the primary factor in shaping people's worldviews, they were quick to become angry and insult others for disagreeing with them or when they deemed others' views to be "uncivil," "bigoted," etc.
This is why, even more than before, I value patience and civility in discussions, and it is also part of why I realized that being bitter toward any given religion or culture and condemning it wholesale is counterproductive and doesn't even begin to fully address the root causes of the issues I have struggled with in my country for nearly a decade--mainly (but not exclusively) religious intolerance, social isolation, homophobia, sexism, and demonization of those with differing beliefs.