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I'm having a good time discussing this, I don't have much to on the computer usually!  

The Father, and Jesus, and The Holy Spirit actually, but yeah. You are right, Jesus is the Truth, but you have free will to disagree. If someones says otherwise, they are just not compassionate enough. But see, recognizing your God given right to search for Him or not, does not make your findings right. My argument about truth, love and God presupposes that an ultimate Truth, Love and God exists, if there is an hierarchy, there is a "top" of the hierarchy. Imagine that the universe is a zoo (lol, bare with me) and the faster animal is the "god" of that zoo, and I say "the monkey is the fastest animal here, he is the god of the zoo", and we see a puma running way way faster, which one is the "god of the zoo"? The puma, right? The same goes in reality, there is an ultimate Truth, Love, Goodness, etc, that's God. Now, how can we say that's Jesus? Well, that's a very long topic, but in short, if I had just 30 seconds to decide, I would personally go with the guy that has more than 25.000 ancient historical documents proving his existence (is easier to say that Jesus existed than Gengis Khan!), and the guy that had his disciples willing to die for Him, even way after He wasn't around anymore, and the only guy that said that He is truly God and a loving God nonetheless. 

 And yes, Baptism is important to salvation, but the Catholic faith (the Church founded by Christ) says in the Catechism (good source to questions, if you want to study about) that people that never heard of Jesus and ignore Him have no "guilt", but those who know Him and choose to ignore Him, have it. In the passage you quoted we can see that, the full context is "[But] later, as the eleven were at table, he appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw Him after he had been raised (meaning that the disciples didn't believe the women that first saw Jesus after He resurrected) . He said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned."

So, you can only be judged by those metrics if you heard the good news of salvation, but by hardness of heart does not believe. Like the 11 disciples didn't believe the women. And baptism is a way of showing that you believe and understand. And all this "ritual" of baptism, is still a human way to understand and be close to God, a way He gave us, with our human minds. Because at the end, only He will decide if someone goes to hell or not, but in His wiseness, He gave us blueprints to make His decision easier and help us get to Heaven, we call those blueprints sacraments. His mercy is infinite, but we have to want it. Also, our free will it's not the only variable, Eva and Adam choose freely eat the apple at the garden, but Satan influenced them. You may search for God, but Satan can try to influence you. Heck, even Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert (including to attempt suicid*).  

Lastly, this discussion reminded me of the Creation of Adam paiting. God's finger is fully stretched out. But is Adam's finger is retracted, hesitant, is Adam's choice to reach, and that's ok, God understands that. God is so good that if you don't want to be close to Him, who is goodness itself, you don't need to be at all, but you should understand what that entails. Here on Earth, we can still go make friends with Him, but the decisions in the afterlife are eternal.