Belief is not a choice, but only a result

Thanks to Pro for the debate. As this is my first debate on Debate.org, I ask understanding and guidance in the event I make a mistake or do something incorrect.There seem to be two distinct points mentioned in Pro's arguments:1) Belief is not a choice, but only a result of our experiences2) Christianity requires everyone to be able to believe in it to be validI disagree with both assertions and will lay out my case below.Belief is not a choice, but only a result of our experiences - DisagreePreface: I am going to assume that we are agreeing with the premise that free will exists, otherwise the entire debate is pretty much pointless. I agree with Pro that our beliefs are shaped by our experiences. For example, someone who has never heard of Christ of Christianity certainly cannot believe in Christianity (more on that in my next point). However, within the realm of our experiences, our beliefs are not set in stone. To demonstrate this, I'd like to use Pro's good example of Happiness. It certainly is possible to choose to be happy, and this choice is, in fact, a major part of cognitive-behavioral therapy. When people are feeling depressed or anxious, they are encouraged to choose to reframe how they are thinking about a situation to change their feelings on the situation. For example, if someone is feeling frustrated because they are stuck in traffic, they could reframe their thinking to appreciate the conversation they're having with their child, talking about things they might not have a chance to discuss later. By choosing to find something positive about the situation, they can change their emotional response and become happy.To address Pro's point, this is certainly choosing to take action that achieves the result of happiness, it's not choosing to be happy itself. However, choosing to take an action that you know will result in happiness is effectively choosing to be happy.Similar to happiness, it is possible to choose what you believe from a set of possibilities. If your teenager is late coming home at night, you can choose to believe that they're in serious trouble, or you can choose to believe that they just lost track of time. You don't have definite proof one way or the other (thus the concept of faith that Pro mentioned), and may not even have any evidence to back up your belief. But you choose what you believe by how you frame your outlook on the situation, and can change that believe by reframing your outlook.Christianity requires everyone to be able to believe in it to be valid - DisagreeAs we have yet to define Christianity for the purposes of our debate, I'm going to outline my definition here:Christianity is the belief that, through studying and following the teachings of Jesus Christ, one can have a closer relationship with the Divine (a.k.a. God)Please note that, although many Christians believe in religious exclusivity and that non-belief in Christianity will result in no relationship with the Divine, in the broadest sense, Christianity is not exclusive and does not deny other paths of approaching or understanding the Divine.With that said, there is no contradiction between the existence of those who have never been exposed to Christianity and the faith itself. In fact, Jesus' Great Commission acknowledges the fact that the majority of people on earth have never heard of the faith, and He tells His faithful to spread the faith to those who haven't heard, so that they might have a closer relationship with the Divine as well. He doesn't condemn those who haven't heard, but instead simply states that He can offer a new way to understand the Divine.As for those who have heard about Christianity, as there is no proof either way, it's a matter of choosing what to believe based on incomplete evidence (as laid out in my point above). To be Christian, you don't need to believe the entirety of the Bible, or that it happened literally how it is written out. In fact, to be Christian, you don't even need to believe that Jesus Christ is a deity. All you need to believe is that something in the story of Jesus Christ has some value to your life, and can help you to better understand the Divine. Other religious lineages and contrary scientific evidence are irrelevant to whether you believe you can find some personal value in the story of Jesus Christ.If God is real, then there is no way any one human could fully and accurately understand the entirety of God's being. All we can do to understand the Divine is to try our best given our human limitations. We shape our beliefs based on our experiences, and on the experiences of others, both now and from days long past, and we can choose to change those beliefs whenever we choose to reframe our understanding of reality.