Dear Manga, I earnestly wish to know where you're coming from better. Did you grow up in a protestant church? What has caused you to start questioning things like the afterlife? I really want to know about how old you are, because I feel like that might make a difference in how I put things to you. Do your friends and family know what you're going through? See, I know I'm not the only one who is very curious about your back story, which is why I will ask you again, in my nicest, most entreating voice, to pretty please go over to the Introductions section and take a few minutes to tell us a little bit about you. We really do want to know. 
Ok, I'm 15, my family is originally from Ukraine, but of Turkish origin. I think they moved from Turkey to Ukraine many generations ago, so they practice Christian faith now. I was brought up in North America, so I attended a Catholic school. I remember I totally believed in God, and Catholicism. I used to pray every night, and I used to go to Church every so often. In my eyes, God created the earth, the first people were Adam and Eve, if a person is good during their lives, he or she goes to heaven. If they are bad, they go to hell. I remember I used to fear hell, as any typical Catholic practicing Christian would. I think all throughout elementary school, I didn't give much thought into it. In my first year of high school (last year), I went to a science museum with a school class. I had learned about the concept of evolution, but had barely considered it. At the museum, we looked at the evolution of a sloth, and other animals. Then, we were told about the Earth being billions of years old, and how the first life likely appeared on earth, based on current science. I thought to myself, "wow, this makes a whole lot more sense than that idea that two people randomly ended up here, and so on". I remember, from that, I already realized that the bible had issues. I thought to myself, "If I can't trust the whole bible, why would I trust any of it?". At that point, I kind of didn't believe that there was a creator anymore. However, I was somewhat nervous to acknowledge this. I had a few unknowns still that I could not explain. I thought that the majority of evidence for religion was lacking, and being maybe a little rebellious at that age, I decided to try atheism. I would say I was 80% there, and I kind of just pushed the last 20%. At first I was completely scared, as I still felt I was being watched, and that I may be in trouble, but I thought, "those are just my fears", so I kind of ignored them. One day not too long ago, a religious friend sent me a video of Howard Storm, the atheist who apparently died, saw hell, was tortured, and then when he came back he became a minister, as Jesus told him to do so. This scared me. I didn't even know about NDEs. I thought that there was no evidence of afterlife, so I pretty much rejected it. Suddenly, this seemed like it could be true. I became religious again and prayed for forgiveness. That totally scared the living daylights out of me. However, I researched the topic more, and found many explanations for NDEs, including G force pilots having OBEs when they lose blood supply to the brain, and some have pretty realistic hallucinations. However, then, with further reading, I found Dr. Long's work, which claims all these amazing statistics, and now I slightly fear again that Howard Storm, as well as Ian Mccormack, Don Brubaker, and other former atheists who claim to see hell actually saw it. The part of NDEs that I find unexplainable is that so many people claim to see things so clearly and that everything feels "more real" than real life. There are reports of blind NDErs, and reports of people going to places far away from their accidents, and verifying what took place. One man was able to visit his next door neighbour, who had a crying baby. He claims he could talk to the baby, and found the baby had a broken arm. When he woke up, he told his neighbours the news, and it was in fact true. Other people have been able to retell exactly what doctors did and said. Penny Sartori did a test where she asked patients who were totally out during their close brushes with death to try and guess what happened during their operations, and she claims they all got everything completely wrong, yet these NDErs tend to get so many things right. There are even cases of people healing after these NDEs. There seems to be some scientific explanation, but I feel that there are still very many grey areas here, and I do not know if these NDEs and OBEs can be dismissed just like that. I guess I would take comfort in knowing these are fake, because there are quite a few where atheists and Christians who do not go to Church end up in hell, and I really fear that. I would be so happy if I knew for a fact that there was no life after death, then I could enjoy my life more again.
