Cool, I like linguistics. I'd like to learn Arabic. I'm a student from Israel, lived in the US for about half my life. Were you an atheist from a young age, or did you become one later? What made you become an atheist? (And by the way, isn't it Esperanto?)

Hello, Mormious. Thanks for the post. I was born and reared by a Southern Baptist family in the piedmont of South Carolina (wedged between North Carolina and Georgia). I broke from the Baptists around the age of 15, and spent the next 9 years studying Mahayana Buddhism. I practiced a form of nature-worshiping paganism from 1979 until 1994, when I returned to embrace the Theravadan form of Buddhism.The prolonged lack of any evidence in my search for something beneficent in the universe is how I arrived at being an atheist.

As for Esperanto, yes and no. "Esperanto" is the name of the language, and one can say "Mi parlas esperanton" [1s speak esperanto-accusative], but most long time Esperantists say "Mi parlas esperante." [1s speak esperanto-adverb], with esperante describing how I speak. I freely admit that I'm troubled by languages that use accusative forms for objects of verbs such as "see", "hear", "speak", "like". If I say "I like books.", I'm not saying that I do anything to the books. Some languages use a passive form (e.g. "Me gustan libros." [1s-dat please-3p books]), some use middle-voice (e.g. "Mér finnst bækur."[1s-reflexive like books.])

Where in the USA did you live, and for how long? What drew you back to Isreal? What do you do WRT employment there?

I see, I knew that the -e suffix denotes the adverb form in Esperanto, but I didn't know one is supposed to use it in this case. I speak Hebrew and English and in both the accusative form is used to state what language one speaks.

I identify as atheist, and I'm interested in discussions over the validity of religion. But because I was raised by parents who are also atheist, I sometimes get worried I'm biased, and don't really know enough about the religious world view, so I'm always curious about people who were raised religious and later became atheists on their own. A good example is a guy named Aron Ra from Texas, who is an atheist and science activist and youtuber.

My childhood was divided almost equally between Israel and the US, and all of my extended family lives in Israel. I went to high school in NJ, but for whatever reason I just had my mind made up that I was coming back, so here I am studying biology.