# Opinions on Sir Francis Bacon



## Haeralis (Jan 13, 2018)

Yesterday, my third publication to _The Imaginative Conservative _went live. The brief essay describes Bacon's use of religious language in _The New Atlantis _done for the purpose of aggrandizing science and coopting Christianity for earthly progress. You can read the essay here:
http://www.theimaginativeconservati...bacons-new-atlantis-gordon-dakota-arnold.html

I'm wondering what my brothers in Christ here at the Puritanboard believe about Francis Bacon. Some have been more convinced that Bacon was a largely orthodox Christian; most notably, Francis Schaeffer, who speaks very highly of Bacon as a Protestant thinker in _How Shall We Then Live? 
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As can be inferred from my essay, I am certainly not convinced. Bacon is largely considered a hardcore materialist, empiricist and modernist. He was a close colleague and collaborator with the apostate philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whom was described by Leo Strauss as a chief expositor of "political atheism" and by the Earl of Clarendon as a man whose "pandor to bestiality" has "had so great a share in the debauchery of his Generation, that a good Christian can hardly hear his name without saying of his prayers."

Has anyone studied Sir Francis Bacon in-depth who can shed further light on his religious opinions? I do think that his _New Atlantis _makes it clear that he has far more faith in science than in orthodox Protestantism.


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