American secular humanists are Patriots too!

Science and reason in this Country, and secular humanists in particular are getting a bad rap from the religious right. The U.S. Navy closely reflects the statistical numbers of United States’ demographics. According to The Pew Forum data, collected by Trinity College, there are some 16.1% of Americans who are unaffiliated and don’t identify in any way with any religion. (religions.pewforum.org/affiliations). However, service personnel tend to be even younger than the National average which drives Non Religious numbers even higher, so that 22% of Americans aged 18-29 years identify themselves as Non Religious (from http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/).
The secularist position really need not be as loathsome as it seems to be.. . After all, many of the founding fathers were non religious men of science and philosophy,...Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine and Jefferson among them. Certainly the stigma of the infamous blabbermouth, Madalyn O’Hair, Founder, American Atheists, and the murderous legacy of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Communist party in Russia, do not represent the aspirations of secular humanists in this Country..

For Some, Faith, Science and Reason Can Be Reconciled!

Ben Franklin, Tom Paine and Jefferson were Deists.. Einstein was a Deist.. The Deist position is reasonable, rational and does not conflict with science.
Christian belief can be a reasonable choice, provided it is consistent with personal religious experience (evidence observed,) and that beliefs incorporate the facts, ...the evidence of the natural world. For me the dilemma with belief in a Deity is that one has to ask oneself, how could it be that after creating this pristine universe, the Prime Mover would need to go back and repair his defective cosmos with a wretched dungeon in reserve for his greatest achievement, mankind?. .It is a challenge to reason, one that must be worked out.
In my own case I simply see the "default position" for those who have not had a Damascus Road experience and who see no evidence that deities are necessary for the Universe to work, as the "non-theist"(a-theist) position , rather than the "maybe/ don’t know" (agnostic) position, or the "there is definitely a prime mover" (Deist) position.