Choosing what to believe (rather than being rationally compelled) is sometimes necessary when you're bombarded with competing, contradictory fact claims. Eg. The internet was supposed to herald a New Dawn Information Age. But many of us, when faced with the Internet's myriad 'facts' about Global Warming, Climate Change, Covid-19 statistics, Abortion, etc. simply retreat back into the comfort zone and safety of fedeism - believing what we prefer to believe. (Unborn babies don't feel pain, Big Pharma is scamming us, humans can't change the climate..)
It's also sometimes necessary to choose what you believe the evidence means. Evidence by itself doesn't always answer "ought" questions. I can choose a course of action based on hard evidence yet someone else might choose an opposite course of action from the exact same set of facts.
...if you're Abraham and you hear a loud voice telling you to take Isaac up a mountain, maybe you can't pretend (choose to believe) you didn't hear a voice. You don't dispute the fact that you heard something. (Sensory evidence.) But you still have to process that evidence and decide if it was a demon trying to trick you, God trying to test you, someone hiding behind a bush playing a prank.
