At the turn of the century, great minds like Carl Marx and Sigmund Freud were
regarding religion as an unnecessary nuisance to humanity. Marx called it "the opiate of
the masses", and Freud : "the neurosis of mankind". They were making the view that
religion is not of divine nature, but a conception of the human mind, a very popular and
acceptable belief. They believed that a religion should reflect the needs of the people and
Aldus Huxley subscribed to these views of religion, but nonetheless realized that it
is a part of human nature. He saw it as something that can't just be thrown away
altogether, but can be changed and manipulated to suit the cultures needs. This comes
through strongly in Brave New World. He anticipates how the people in this world would
no longer need to celebrate religion the way we do today, but would still practice rituals of
their own right. He portrays contemporary religion as largely superstitious, and believes
that future civilizations will regard it as being savage. Nonetheless, their religion may be
different, but it's in no way better. It takes it's shape from the culture in which it was
conceived, and reflects how ridiculously childish this culture really is. They may have a
negative opinion of our religions, but so do we of theirs. Keeping this in mind, we find that
their religion contributes to the novel's dystopian vision, but this is only because we have
been conditioned in such a way that we find it quite immature and simpleminded compared
to our own. We could turn this on it's head and say that the savage's religion, which
represents our own, contributes to the Brave New World's view that the savage's society
Through the world of the savage at the reservation, we can see what the people of
the Brave New World think of our religion and how they would react to
...