There are people for whom Ego and social status are more important than life itself. They, like you, and the OP who stated effectively "I can't converse with people who have strongly held opinions", are usually people with such little confidence that the only thing they have going for them is the hope that a nice suit and not rocking the boat will get them through life comfortably.
There are people who are there to accomplish an objective such as completing a project or achieving a goal. Those people will present strong opinions to each other, and often will call each other names and hack things out. But, at the end of the day, they are motivated to explore the other sides opinion in order to discourage it and that fosters the growth of character that can admit they are wrong. They learn which discussions are important as a group, which cause the group to go in a completely insane tangent that will accomplish nothing, and which discussions don't matter; 90% of the debates you have don't mean a thing and often whether you're using one method or another is pointless so long as the work gets done to spec.
People who debate on ego and their own inflated sense of importance do not present discreet arguments, and are incapable of having a discussion about achieving a goal or completing an objective. Forgive my vitriol, but after seeing those people flush untold millions down the drain and hurt people and families countless times, they belong flipping burgers or in a mass grave.
If your job gets to the point, or is going in the direction of such catastrophe that you might as well not be there, it's time to have a "course correction" discussion with your boss. You don't have to walk in with your resignation letter in your pocket, but a simple "X is really stupid, here's why". Don't blame people, don't make assumptions, just point out the situation, how you got here, and where you think things should go. I've never, ever been fired for this. I have been fired for not having those conversations, however.
Additionally, there's a sexist truth here, which is men are made to make women into their purpose for being, and women are made to follow them, this is how nature works. The kinds of corporate environments where strong opinions are eschewed or actively discouraged are usually those with lots of grown women and boys parading as men. Those environments exist usually as cargo cults for established enterprises such as utilities or governments. The work performed does not further society or the enterprise in any meaningful way and in order to compensate for that, management builds an ego farm of gullible, easily manipulated people that will do as they are told unquestioningly. It's like having a harem. Those environments tend towards managerial abuse, and end up going down like the Hindenburg. If you find yourself in that kind of environment, decide on your exit strategy early.