In my experience often understanding how stupid the points of other people are makes me hate them much more than if I simply would not understand them. Is this what you evangelize?
You don't need to understand their stupid points, you need to understand why they feel a certain way about them. As this election cycle clearly shows, emotion isn't dictated by fact.
Empathy isn't "liking/hating" someone, it's being able to relate to their emotional state.
I don't agree with someone who supports Donald Trump as president... but I can understand being afraid and desperate to a point of irrationality.
Not understanding someone means that I can ignore him/her, because I have to admit that I don't know enough to connect the dots.
Once I understand him/her, two things can happen:
1. I can see that there exists also some completely different, but also very rational, point of view from which one can see the whole facts and get a much better impression of him/her. I might still disagree, but now I have a better impression.
2. I can see how stupid the conclusions really are from which the other persons are. While before I could be ignorant (I knew neither enough that that this makes a good nor a bad impression on me), once I understood I can not anymore. In this case the impression can also become much worse.
So understanding (empathizing) is a very two-sided sword.
Empathizing doesn't mean understanding someone's argument and deciding that it is really stupid. That is pretty much the opposite of empathy.
Empathizing means understanding the person well enough to see how they came to be someone who reached that conclusion, even if it is illogical from your point of view.
