On the lunacy of free will

[Spongebob]

I am no longer a practicing Catholic, but that doesn't mean I'm an atheist. I have my own conception of God. 

Didn't say you were an atheist.  But you, yourself have stated that you do not believe in the Christian god.  So you chose to reject that god for what reason?  Just to be different?  Do you also reject the Hindu gods?  What about the Chinese religions?  Japanese?  Wicca?  Jewish god?  Mazda?  Do you accept all those gods as real or do you have just one that you prefer?  If you have only one, then you are 99% atheist.

How much "intellectual endeavor" does it take it to figure out a religion isn't right for you? Not much. You just took the lazy route and decided to reject all things spiritual, wholesale.

That depends on the person and just how deeply you were indoctrinated.  Religious indoctrination is intended to bypass reason and intellect and cling to a person's emotions.  It can sometimes take tremendous effort to override emotions if they go deep enough.  This is why people who join cults will often reject their own family members to stay in the cult.

And for your information, I had to work for years to cross the line from questioning Christianity to outright rejecting it.  It took years more to come to the eventual conclusion that the very idea of god was invented.  All of this time reading and studying and even praying for understanding.  So yeah, that sounds really lazy, doesn't it.  I mean, why didn't I just do what everyone else was doing, go to church every Sunday and drink the koolaid.  Much more difficult.  

What I'm beginning to surmise is that you are drawn to the idea of rejecting whatever god you now believe in, but for the same reasons I've discussed you are reluctant to do so.  This is the reason you hang around an atheist forum making lame and incomprehensible arguments and generally making a fool out of yourself.  You're looking into this idea but not ready to admit it, perhaps even to yourself.