The New Atlantis is a novel that tells the story of European explorers who come across a utopian island civilization in North America called Bensalem. The author of this book, Sir Francis Bacon, is often considered the father of the scientific method and probably wrote this book to give us an idea of ​​his perfect world dedicated to the sciences. Society on the fictional island of Bensalem focuses on a scientific institution known as Solomon's House, where scientific experiments of all kinds are conducted using Bacon's scientific method. Despite this deep devotion to science, Bensalem also follows the Christian religion closely and much of the book is dedicated to talking about the island's Christian culture and customs. This raises an intriguing question: what role does religion play in Bacon's ideal science-based society? This essay will attempt to discover what role religion plays in Bacon's ideal society and the connections between religion and science. While the Christian religion plays an important role in Bensalem, some peculiarities of Bensalem's religious system suggest that Bacon thinks the role of religion should be limited in society. In Bensalem, once a man lives to see thirty descendants, the government is required to pay for a feast for the man with a ceremony, which Bacon spends three pages describing (Bacon 12-14). This part of Bensalem's religion appears to be unimportant for the sake of the utopian society and simply seems out of place in Bacon's ideal world. Therefore, this may be Bacon's way of quietly telling us his opinion that certain religious practices are a waste of people's resources and are not necessary for the good of society. Despite Bensalem's official religion of Christianity, many... middle of paper... have a religion devoted to God. Based on his novel The New Atlantis, Francis Bacon's perfect society would have a place for both religion and world. science. When Bacon appears to express criticism of religion, he is only expressing some of the problems he sees as caused by organized religions such as Catholicism and Calvinism. Instead of these organized religions, Bacon believes that the future of religion lies in science. Bacon sees the many great things that science can accomplish for the world and is certain that science must be the way God intended for humanity to accomplish His will on Earth. In conclusion, Francis Bacon's ideal society would favor neither religion nor science, but would instead be devoted to the religion of science. Works Cited Bacon, Francis. The New Atlantis. New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1901. The New Atlantis of Francis Bacon. Network. 03 December. 2013.