Losing my Religion

You'd have been had pressed to find a more genuinely Catholic boy than myself as a young boy. How I later developed an antipathy toward religion would seem to be an impossibility if you could have seen into my heart and mind as a youngster. I have an idea about the development of the individual that revolves around formative moments- epiphanies, if you will- that steer an individual toward becoming who they are. The problem with epiphanies is that they require consciousness and the formative moments that I am talking about are not necessarily recognized by the individual as a great event at the time. However, it is something that the person will mark and remember, but not necessarily realize is as big an event in their lives at the time it occurs, as they will later recognize as something that helped make them what they are. The event I'm referring to in my life occurred when I was about eight years old.
I found out then that, according to Catholic doctrine, no one could go to heaven unless they were baptized in the church. The problem was that my best friends at the time, the Blount brothers Roger and Eric, were not Catholic, and were therefore ineligible for admission to heaven. I can clearly remember asking my mother, "What kind of heaven will it be if my friends aren't allowed to go?" My mother gave a perfectly catholic response: "They could be allowed in if they would only get baptized in the Catholic church." I accepted that answer and ran over to their house in order to convert my little Baptist friends as fast as I could, certainly to the chagrin of their parents. For their part, Roger and Eric responded with what amounted to a polite refusal. Although I didn't recognize it at the time, the sceptic in me was born right then and there. I didn't dwell on the issue, but it stuck with me. I hadn't begun questioning miracles yet, but I was kind of determined to find a way to get my friends into heaven.
In my teens, I began to recognize hypocrisy in some of the people who went to our church. Mentioning this to my father almost got me thrown out of the house. Then I began to have some serious doubts about the whole religion with a simple logical progression, grounded in the faith, that just didn't add up for me. If Jesus really was God, then he would know everything, including the future. That means that he would know that his actions would eventually lead to his crucifixion. Wouldn't this be suicide on his part? Wouldn't people be better off if they had a living god in their midst, teaching them on a daily basis, than they would be if he let himself be killed and left us just another ugly example of humanity's failings? The illusion began to crumble.
I needn't bother you with the remaining details of my personal spiritual growth. One of the cornerstones of my own current 'system', for the lack of a better word, is that no two people agree on everything, so a diversity of beliefs is a simple fact of life. Trying to force a person to believe anything is actually quite impossible, and rational discourse is the only way to find any common ground, however infrequently it may actually occur. Truth in dialogue, along with experience, are the only ways to find verifiable truth in this world. Honesty is not a policy, it is the only means to a worthy end. Suffice it to say that when I read Thomas Jefferson's quote that "I am of a sect by myself", I found a spiritual brother- one who would probably like me as a person and enjoy my company, but who would probably disapprove of some of my behaviors. Sort of like Frankie.