Some of the more prominent founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, were vocal about their opposition to organized religion, while other notable founders, like Patrick Henry, were strong proponents of traditional religion.

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In the eighteenth century of Benjamin Franklin and the nineteenth century of Thomas Edison, an educated person could feel some familiarity with science and even dabble in it as an amateur.

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It was brought over by the reformed Calvinists in the 1600s, made secular and practical by Benjamin Franklin, expressed as the "Pursuit of Happiness" by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, noticed by Alexis de Tocqueville, defined by Max Weber and written into the popular culture by Horatio Alger and others.

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