The Gospel According to Musk
The man leans forward in his chair, squinting at the screen in front of him. Numbers and symbols streak across the large computer monitor in a steady stream of light, flickering back and forth as they race from top to bottom. He smiles broadly, eyes gleaming as the reflection from the monitor flickers across his face. “We did it”, he whispers under his breath. “My God, we did it !”, he screams as he dials the cell phone in his hand. The line rings briefly and then a female voice answers, “Hello, Elon. I guess you just saw the same neural stream I did. What does it feel like to be the God of a new world?”
Elon Musk is well known as the founder of Tesla and SpaceX and is revered by many as a new prophet of the 21st century. He is constantly in the news and social media weighing in on a range of issues facing humanity including global warming, artificial intelligence, immortality, space exploration, and the survival of the human race as a species. He’s lauded as kind of a Tony Stark character, saving the world with the newest superhuman technology.
I recently watched the interview he did with Tucker Carlson, which turned out to be one of Carlson’s last before being axed by Fox. This was the first time I heard Musk talk about his personal beliefs and vision for the world. I found myself left with a feeling of uneasiness that someone with his core beliefs has so much sway over modern culture.
One of the things that most amazes me about him is how his public perception has changed so dramatically in such a short period of time. Only a couple of years ago, Musk was considered a darling of the left and an enemy of all that’s good and holy by the right, especially Tucker Carlson. However, here he was being congratulated as a defender of conservatism. This got me wondering, who the heck is Elon Musk and what is his real game?
Political Beliefs
Even though he calls himself an independent, he has been a staunch supporter of Democrats most of his life. He supported Clinton, Obama, and Biden for President and has donated millions almost exclusively to those on the left. Then, during the 2022 congressional midterms, he announced his support for some Republican candidates. He even gave a nod to Ron Desantis coming just short of an official endorsement.
One of his main reasons for supporting Republicans this go around is the issue of free speech and censorship on social media.
After his purchase of Twitter, he revealed that there was a substantial amount of censorship on the platform, especially during the Covid crisis and the last election cycle. He made substantial changes to the censorship policies and announced that Twitter would no longer share information or coordinate with governmental agencies to the extent they have done in the past.
He even reinstated Trump and many others who had previously been banned by prior management for various reasons ranging from inciting violence to spreading false propaganda on many issues.
Environmental Quest to Save Humanity
He is a staunch believer in humanity’s contribution to global climate change and has often talked about how his passion for the planet and the environment fueled the founding of Tesla. He is so committed to ridding the world of all carbon emissions that he resigned from President Trump’s business advisory council after Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord.
In a recent interview, he said, “My goals are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization. Engaging on critical issues will on balance serve the greater good.”
Religious Beliefs
Growing up in apartheid South Africa, Musk and his family were regularly attending members of the Anglican church.
However, he says he no longer believes in the God of his youth and instead has developed some strange philosophical beliefs which make many religious conservatives skeptical. He calls himself agnostic, but his real beliefs are more in line with paganistic nature worship and science fiction.
For instance, when asked in an interview what his religious beliefs are he answered, “Like Einstein, my God is the God of Spinosa.” He was referring to Einstein’s answer to the same question in 1929. When asked by a New York rabbi about his religion Einstein replied, “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”
Baruch Spinosa was a 17th-century Dutch philosopher who believed that God is represented by nature itself. In his view, God is not the transcendent creator of the world separate from his creation but is the same as the creation itself. As such, he did not believe in a God who is involved in the lives of man in any meaningful way. In other words, he believed in the pagan worship of nature.
In a recent interview with the satirical website The Babylon Bee, Musk was asked what he thought about Jesus today and if he would accept him as his personal savior. He responded, “I agree with the principles that Jesus advocated. There’s some great wisdom in the teachings of Jesus, and I agree with those teachings. Things like ‘turn the other cheek’ are very important, as opposed to ‘an eye for an eye’. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. Forgiveness is important and treating people as you would wish to be treated. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself. But hey, if Jesus is saving people, I mean, I won’t stand in His way,” Musk added sarcastically with a smirk on his face. “Sure, I’ll be saved. Why not?”
This was not exactly a ringing endorsement of Jesus Christ as his personal savior. His glowing words about the philosophy of Jesus have given hope to many that maybe Musk is on the path to belief and salvation. Of course, as I pointed out in my article, Believing More Than Demons, even Satan and his minions believe that Christ exists and that his philosophy is good for the society which is ultimately why they oppose it.
The Matrix
Perhaps one of Musk’s strangest beliefs is that we are living in some sort of a computer simulation or game created by aliens. In a 2018 interview with NBC News he said,” If you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality,” Musk said before concluding, “We’re most likely in a simulation.”
He’s not alone in this belief, however. Musk has cited the influential astrophysicist (and atheist) Neil deGrasse Tyson who believes there is a 50/50 chance that we live in a simulation.
So to summarize, according to Tyson and Musk, there is a zero chance of a Creator of the universe but there is a 50 percent chance that we are all simulated characters in a video game being played and controlled by aliens!
Taking this seriously for a moment, if we live in a simulation as Musk proposes, then who makes the rules? What is the value of human life if it is nothing but a digital representation that can die and be “respawned” like nothing happened? Imagine the value that would be placed on human life if everyone believed this.
Networking the Human Mind
Inspired by his belief in a digital, matrix-like system, Musk has invested in a company called Neurolink which is attempting to interface the human brain with computers and the internet. The company recently announced that it was successful in implanting a device in the brain of a monkey that allowed it to control a game of pong with its mind. Imagine humanity on the grid, controlled by one individual, organization, or artificial intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence
Musk’s opinion of A. I. has been highly sought after and he’s appeared in numerous interviews as an expert on the subject. He helped start and was a founding board member of the OpenGPT project which is an open-source A.I. platform available to all developers. It is the basis for the code used to create the Chat GPT program and others that have been making so much of the news lately.
Musk originally agreed to make it open and available to all developers because he believed that transparency would discourage its use against society.
However, according to Musk the highly publicized ChaosGPT and others which showed the dark side of A.I, and its ability to show animosity toward humanity helped to change his mind. Specifically, he was concerned about A.I.’s ability to influence society with false information by blasting fake news stories and deep fake pictures and videos which are indiscernible from reality.
As a result of his concerns, he recently stepped down from the board and formed his own private A.I. company which is developing a proprietary platform called “Truth A.I.” He’s recruited some of the top minds in the A.I. field to come up with a form of A.I. which he says “will only tell the truth”, unlike the others.
Musk’s Version of Immortality
Musk has also unveiled a project currently underway at Tesla called Optimus. The goal is to one day be able to upload our personality and store our memories in the cloud. This would give humans the ability to live forever by existing in a virtual world or the real world by downloading the person into an artificial body. In a recent interview Musk said, “We could download the things that we believe make ourselves so unique, Of course, if you’re not in that body anymore, that’s definitely going to be a difference, but as far as preserving our memories, our personality, I think we could do that.”
Wolf or Savior?
In summary, Musk believes in no personal God, certainly not the God of the Bible.
He believes that we live in a simulation being controlled by an advanced alien species.
He wants to plug us all into the network which can be hacked and controlled by himself or another sinister actor.
He denies the divinity of Jesus but does consider his ideas pretty good for society in general. As I discussed in my article, Believing More Than Demons, Satan knows this truth also which is why he opposes it. As I stated, just because one acknowledges something as true does not mean that one will follow this truth. The jury is out and time will tell if Musk really had a “salvation moment”.
He controls a social media platform and is developing his own A.I. to control it.
He is seeking a way to immortality without God by creating his own artificial heaven designed by his imagination.
All of these facts beg one question……Is Musk a wolf or a savior?
Does any of this give you pause? Does it concern you that the wealthiest and most influential person on the planet at the moment has such beliefs?
I get why some on the right are very excited about his support for some of their issues like Covid and censorship on social media. He’s certainly got the attention of the voices on the right like Tucker Carlson for “giving it to the libs”. However, is that enough to overlook his views on the very core issues that are most important to society?
I heard a pastor once say that evil that comes alongside good to oppose evil is still evil. I’m not necessarily saying that Musk has evil intentions, but perhaps his motivations for placating the right on certain issues are an attempt to get them to ignore what he’s doing in other areas.
The pursuit of his warped view of a Godless future could just be a play for personal gain and benefit but it could also be something more insidious, either known or unknown to him. After all, the wolf has to cloak himself in something familiar to fit in so that he will be allowed to operate within the herd unchallenged.
In John 18:38, during his inquisition of Jesus after his arrest, Pontius Pilate famously posited, “What is truth?”
The truth is that the only one who can create life in this world and give us eternal life in the next is Jesus Christ. Those who think they can become their own God by creating their version of “life” and attempting to achieve immortality are greatly mistaken.
It is the age-old whisper of the serpent in the Garden of Eden that continues to tempt man to this very day as we see in Genesis 3: 1-5: Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die. “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.
As Christians, we must proclaim the truth that God the Father is the Creator of all life and His son Jesus Christ is the only way to eternal life. And yes, Satan, God did say these things and we believe Him.
Be vigilant and remember the words of our Lord spoken to us in Matthew 10:16, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
