I’ve been on this forum for a week, and I’ve noticed many people don’t understand me and where I come from. I’m 13. my family are non-religious Hindus. When I was a young kid, my beliefs would change. Sometimes I’d believe in God, and sometimes I wouldn’t. I remember going to bed on August 17th 2021. It was normal, until, I had a thought about death. I started to get scared of it, and I actually was crying. The next day, I would find videos about NDE’s, which at the time convinced me there was an afterlife. On August 19th, I became a Christian, but I didn’t understand the religion. Long story short, for the next two months, I would gain more knowledge about the religion. I would learn that near death experiences don’t necessarily prove the afterlife, but I still believed in Christianity, and that there was evidence for it. Keep in mind I didn’t talk to my family about this. In Late November, a week after my birthday, I would start to have doubts. Things like the earth being 6,000 years old. Then about evolution. In April of 2022, I became a theistic evolutionist, but doubts would continue. I had a ton of questions. A yea passed, and it was April of 2023. I eventually decided that Christianity wasn’t true. I stopped believing the bible, and just like that, I wasn’t a Christian. I would stop thinking about religion. In June, though, I started thinking about supernatural claims. For a while when I was a Christian, I would believe them. I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I couldn’t disprove them. And today, I’m still in this situation. I don’t want to talk to my family about it. I don’t know why, but I get emotional talking about things that I’m struggling with. This is how I got here.
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Rohan1,
In essence with you being a “Coin Flipper” Agnostic, you are still a “half pseudo-christian” because you are leaving the door open in that Christianity and its brutal and bloody serial killer god named Jesus is possibly still true! Get it?
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YOUR QUOTE OF DESPAIR: “Sometimes I’d believe in God, and sometimes I wouldn’t.”
Tell me if you’ve heard this notion before, which god are you referring too because it does make a difference?!
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It would change. When I was little I believed in the Hindu Gods. When I was 9 or so I was an athiest. Then when I was 10 I believed in God, but wasn’t sure if any religion was true. It changed a lot.
@Rohan01 you have a lifetime to examine these ideas, try not to let fear and emotion govern the way you reason. Rather learn to think critically, and strive to be as objective and unbiased as you can. Learn to spot irrational arguments and claims, and try and avoid using them yourself.
When you learn that fear is a natural phenomenon, and learn not to let it dictate your reasoning and beliefs, examining beliefs and claims in a rational and reasonably objective way can be fun. If you think your experiences are unique then I can assure they are not.
Rohan01,
Not to belabor the point too much, but you said that you believed in the Hindu Gods, and when you were 10 years old, you believed in “God,” therefore, which named god was this one?
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Just God. Nothing to do with religion necessarily.
I was raised in a very high-control religion. I’m Canadian and left religion altogether at about 30.
I spent a decade exploring spirituality (channeling, near death, ghosts, and other esoteric topics).
I understand that there is some weird happenings - all humans have a curiousity about the unknown.
I eventually just set a standard for evidence. Not a super high one, but one that I need to be met before I remove stuff from my “I don’t know” pile onto my pretty confident pile 
I have fun and am entertained by the speculative, entertaining stories out there. I do listen at times to “glitch in the matrix” or the “why files”… but it’s not something I’m obsessed with - it’s entertaining.
Edited to add - I’m older now with 3 late teenage boys (well, the oldest is 20 now… time flies).
You have no responsibility to disprove anything; (from my perspective) it seems:
- You took the idea that magic doesn’t exist (or some variant).
- You have created an impossibly high hurdle [“I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I couldn’t disprove them.”]
- So of course you failed to clear this hurdle with this idea.
- Finally you concluded the idea is false (because of the failure at #2), so you assume it’s inverse: Magic does n’t exist.
That is the Perfect Solution Fallacy:
The perfect solution fallacy is a[n]…informal fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes…that a solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it were implemented.
We can’t prove it wasn’t supernatural, so you’ve assumed it must be supernatural. It is totally possible that something isn’t supernatural but that you will never be able to prove that; in which case your reasoning would come to false conclusions (it has an invalid form).
Or in my version:
You can’t prove (or even gather evidence that) I’m not the banana king of mars, so that is evidence that I’m the banana king of mars! It is also evidence I’m the banana king of Venus, and Pluto,…I think you get the point. This line of reasoning is extremely problematic; so you instinctively don’t use it on claims you don’t like (“I’m the king of mars”); but are more than happy to use it on stuff you want to be true (like magic). You are using it selectively. This is human bias, not logic.
You cannot disprove supernatural claims for the same reason you cannot disprove a god. The claims are un-falsifiable (There is a soul) (There is a spirit world) (Ghosts exist.) (People can contact the dead.) (Prophecy is real.) Bla bla bla… There is not a shred of good evidence supporting any of these claims. None. You waste your time clicking on video after video and never think to click on a video asking how it is done. Psychic Surgery Debunked, Exorcism Debunked, Spirituality Debunked, Afterlife Debunked, etc… Each and every single time we have discovered the reasons behind supernatural claims, not once has the answer been supernatural. We don’t even know what that is. How in the hell can you see that which can not be seen? And when we look at the ‘manifestations’ when we look at the facts we have real world explanations.
The Hindu trinity of Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu are pretty basic. Those would be the three biggies. Ganesha was a really popular household God where I grew up. I saw him in many places, (That’s the fat elephant god.)
Anyway, he did say he gave up Hinduism for Christianity. I don’t know why, because the Hindu trinity makes a lot more sense than the Christian trinity. The entire Hindu philosophy seems more sound than the Human Blood Sacrafice of the Christian faith. But then, perhaps that’s just me?
So I didn’t really give up Hinduism for Christianity. Before being a Christian, my beliefs were constantly changing. I believed that there was a God, but not through religions, so kind of like a deist. I became a Christian actually because of Near death experiences, and people seeing Jesus in them. I believed that they proved the afterlife at the time. I didn’t even know about the trinity when I first converted. It’s complicated.
It really doesn’t matter because Jesus is just another of the Hindu Gods. That’s how this works. Brahma, the self-created, is simply playing hide and seek with himself. There is no conflict in being both Christian and Hindu, to a Hindu.
Ok, enough is enough here @Rohan01. I am not convinced that you are who you say you are.
This nonsense of not being able to disprove these fatuous and asinine claims is far too familiar for my liking. Sort of like the claim that rock sentience cannot be disproven.
Now, playing alternate reality-land for a minute, let’s suppose you are legitimate. If what you have claimed is a close approximation of your perspective and experience, I have to ask a few questions. Do you have real, in person friendships? Do you have the freedom to fraternize with others, including friends? How much time do you spend one-on-one with friends weekly?
Do you discuss any non-trivial subjects with your parents? Do you have anyone with whom you can discuss philosophy, religion, politics, social interactions, interpersonal relationships, or other “internal issues”?
Do you consider yourself a fearful person? Do you have other identifiable fears in addition to death?
How much time do you spend online daily?
Are you capable of assessing your own emotional responses to spending extended periods of time watching off-the-wall videos?
Have you considered that perhaps you should just be enjoying the remaining short time you have left of your childhood, and stop forcing yourself to commit to things you are going to need some life experiences to be able to process?
If you are genuine, these questions may be useful. If you are not, well the piper always collects…
Edit to go fly a kite
Exactly. If you don’t mind my expanding a bit, White…
@Rohan01 See, just like White, I thoroughly enjoy seeing odd things that cannot be explained. Such things are fascinating to me, and I’m like a little kid during the rare times I’ve had such experiences. And, moreover, I am easily amused by speculating about so many of the things we puny humans have yet to discover in our universe that defies comprehension in its vastness. Bottom line, though, is that it is purely “entertainment” for me. It’s cheap fun. Apparently, that is the main point you keep missing. Wake up and look around, kid. Our world is an amazing place. And despite how “advanced” we (humans) deem ourselves to be, we have barely even scratched the surface of what all is still out there to discover. Personally, I find that thought exhilarating.
Therefore, it stands to reason there are still many things out there we have YET to understand. And just because we “don’t know” right now, it does not automatically make an unexplained event “supernatural”. As far as I’m concerned, the term “supernatural” is something used by movie makers and book writers to tell a good story to make them more money. And if it happens to be a good movie or book, I would happily pay for the entertainment it provides me. 
Yeah, I am a sucker for a good time-travel film.
Inter-dimensional passageways appearing spontaneously,
methane-based life forms, other weird shit, all great entertainment. Like an occasional lottery ticket…small investment, short time reward…
I cannot imagine not having an imagination…
Edit to listen to John Lennon
I was listening to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galexy last night. The robots at the soccer game were smashing members of the crowd when I fell asleep. Arthur had 2 days to go before the Earth was destroyed a second time and was debating whether to call himself or not when his friend noticed the S.E.P.
It’s honestly easier for me to talk about these things with people online. It’s hard to me to talk about these things with my parents and friends. They’ll think I’m crazy, or they won’t understand. And I have to admit I am a little crazy, I just don’t want people I know to think I am, or maybe they already do. I’m not that fearful. I’m bot afraid of death anymore, just not knowing whats after it. The only other fear really is being afraid of the dark.
Yes I agree, for a variety of reasons ideas are more easily expressed through this medium.
Sorry to hear that, but in this case I hope you stick around.
You’d be surprised how often this happens among even close families.
Being dead is easy, I was dead for billions of years, it’s the dying part I am keen should be as painless as possible, and that I squeeze in as much fun, experience, and enjoyment as I can before it inevitably happens.
I like the dark, and the light, they each have their place.
I always joke with my family and friends that if they insist on a funeral for me, then the only music I want is “Hello Darkness My Old Friend” by Simon and Garfunkel.
Fear is something we all must earn to face in our own way, but never let it stop you enjoying your life.
Or as the late, great, Samuel Clemens puts it…" “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
Why would you assert something is different after than what was before?
Unfortunately you don’t get to choose your family. You can choose your friends. When people are not supportive of your exploration, it may be time to rid yourself of those relationships. Not all relationships are healthy. Knowing how to tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships could take a lifetime to learn, but it is an extremely important concept to grasp.