Belief isn't a choice because it doesn't matter how much you believe something is true, if the observable facts of reality don't coincide with what your beliefs are, then your beliefs are wrong, not reality. You could believe all day long the sky is red, you could tell yourself that 100 times, you could draw it out in coloring books as red, but guess what? It still doesn't make it red. You may believe it is, you may have even convinced yourself it's red. But the observable facts of reality, the objective facts, are you're wrong, and it's blue. Your belief is wrong.
In this sense, you do not get to choose what is true and what isn't. You can choose to lie to yourself and trick yourself (quite an impossible task in my own mind, similar to how you can't hide objects from yourself), but you can't force yourself to believe in something.
It's unbelievably sad to me that you'd put something as petty as 'bragging rights' before human life and existence.
Grow up.