Reading his testimony I see that Professor Reeves has the same problems with critical thinking and distinction between fact and fiction that you do, Dr. Peterson. He is just better at trying to justify his unfounded and irrational beliefs than you are.
Reeves insists that he does not "just believe". Then he proceeds to convince us that this is exactly what he does.
He describes how he maintains belief in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary. He accounts his reason for continued belief to some event in early life, some miracle, which he interprets to be of the divine. Rather than be a bit skeptical in retrospect and seek rational explanations, he continues in his unfounded and irrational belief as to the supernatural provenance of the event.
This while making statements such as:
The rational mind is correct to be skeptical.
And yet we read:
I had my own otherworldly encounter which continues to speak to my soul and nourish me when spiritually weak.
In other words, when rationality starts to creep in, he thinks about the emotions elicited by this miraculous event and can feel better about a return to irrationality. He says as much.
In the intervening years I have learned a significant amount of Church history, more academic than devotional: polygamy, polyandry, treasure digging, first vision narratives, race, blood atonement, Mormonism and women, Mountain Meadows Massacre, curse of Cain/Ham, blacks and the priesthood, blacks and the temple, post-manifesto polygamy, correlation, and other topics that were unknown to me when I was nineteen.
It would appear that Prof. Reeves is not skeptical enough if he truly believes that these are hallmarks of the one and only true church on the face of the Earth.
Did he never ask himself why he did not know this when he was 19?
Did he ask why those leaders who profess belief in an eternal gospel were so embarrassed about these doctrines and beliefs that they saw to it that these truths were not taught to Bro. Reeves?
As scientist, I find that if data come to light that clearly falsify a certain hypothesis, it is best to develop a new hypothesis that is consistent with all of the data, rather than to pretend that the new contrary and disconfirming data actually support the old hypothesis. To do the latter, as Reeves readily admits he has done, demonstrates a great deal of intellectual dishonesty.
Reeves has provided a description of his faith that is exactly analogous to the situation I have just described. He continues in irrational belief in spite of evidence to the contrary, which he even cites himself.
If this is the best argument for belief in Mormonism that the educated in the Church can make, is it any wonder that educated people are leaving in droves and that conversion rates among the educated are in a downward spiral?