Questioning Reality

We were all born with the ability to create and have our own opinions on any subject one can imagine. What one person believes is true is not neccessarily the truth for another. It also doesn't mean that either/or is wrong nor does it mean it is truth in either case.
I was raised as a Christian of the Baptist faith for as long as I can remember and there are members of my family, some deceased now, who are/were some of the most faithful and fervent worshipers I have ever known. I am not one of them. In fact, for a few years now I have been toying with the idea that perhaps religion is a man-made thing.
The Bible is, in fact, a collection of books and stories written throughout a number of years. Books chosen by a group of men who selected the works of "approved" writers for inclusion into a volume of writings so that Christians could claim a "holy" book of their own. What made it holy was that it was deemed so by the hierarchy of Christian elders who held power and prestige over commoners of their day. These were mortal men, who held no real power over faith and the beliefs of others.
Several things that I have pondered over for a number of years are as follows.
The Virgin Birth- God supposedly planted this child, Jesus, into the womb of the Virgin Mary. A virgin. Yet, Mary was joined to Joseph. Does this mean they never had sex during their relationship, before she conceived OR did she meet him while pregnant and he agreed to join with this pregnant woman? How did she explain THAT one? Where did this mysterious sperm come from?
Heaven's location- We all look skyward when we think of Heaven and it was probably a no-brainer in the days before there were airplanes in the sky and humans flying through outer space. It is believed to be "up there" somewhere and yet no-one has of yet discovered it in all the years of space travel and flying through the sky? Where is it? On an astral plane? Invisible? What about the streets paved in gold we have heard so much about?
Adam and Eve- So, God created a man and decided he was probably lonely and needed to procreate so he created a woman from one of Adam's ribs and placed them both in this Garden of Eden. Fine. How does one explain cavemen? Are we to believe that humans actually regressed instead of progressed to a time when they started living in caves and grunting like animals, barely walking upright? In what order did man progress; Adam and Eve, Cavemen and then came Jesus and the writers of the Bible? PROOF that cavemen existed has been found in hieroglyphs all over the world. Where is the proof that Adam and Eve actually existed?
History, I believe, was written by a plethora of men with hard-ons on power trips. Men who needed to make themselves feel big and bad by lowering or destroying the self-esteem and self-worth of others, such as men they didn't see as their equal, people of other races, the lower class and especially women. Men, barbaric and cruel, who got off on the pain of others with their twisted torture devices and inhuman acts of violence.
Religion was created the same way.
Be fruitful and multiply, yeah that benefits those horny men into getting laid on a regular basis by making it seem dutiful for religious reasons.
Painful childbirth. Childbirth, according to the Bible, was not initially painful yet "God" caused it to be as punishment to Eve and all of her female descendants for biting of the forbidden fruit. What about Adam? He bit it too. But no, there would be no repercussions for Adam because he was A MAN.
Self-flagellation- Please. Whose idea was it to thrash oneself with a barbed whip as a show of faithfulness and loyalty to God? Why indeed would this please God or anyone else?
I have gone on long enough and managed to get a lot of this off of my chest and the hour is late. In truth, I just don't know what I believe in anymore but I am not so bold as to suggest that GOD absolutely does not exist for only one reason. What if I convince myself that he doesn't when he really does? Talk about making God angry? Then again, there are cultures who believe in their own idol and refuse or are unable to believe in the same God I refer to. Christians, Catholics, Jews, Hinduism, Muslims, Agnostics, Mormons, Protestants, Wiccans, Islam, Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, Scientologists, etc... all have a different or varied view of some sort of idol and, as I said in the beginning, we all are born with the ability to create and have our own opinions. What makes the Christian Bible view the absolute truth? If I decided tomorrow to convert to Islam and pray to Allah, does that make the Christian God suddenly non-existant? What if I choose Wicca and prayed to a Goddess, is HE still "up there" condemning me to Hell for doing so? I think not. It is all a question of faith and what we allow ourselves to believe as well as what we are taught in the places of worship we attend or what information we are handed-down through our families' generations. How it is interpreted depends on our elders; how it is received and believed is up to us.