Eccentric tech mogul Elon Musk recently said that he considers himself a “cultural Christian” during a conversation with conservative commentator Jordan Peterson.
Musk is the founder of SpaceX, the CEO of Tesla, and the majority owner of X (formerly Twitter).
Peterson is a Canadian psychologist and author. While Peterson has often spoken positively about Christianity and has even offered a lecture series on the biblical book of Exodus through his partnership with The Daily Wire, he does not identify as a confessional Christian.
Peterson and Musk recently sat down for a two-hour interview, which was broadcast on X. During the freewheeling conversation, the two spoke about a number of topics, including artificial intelligence, ancient Mesopotamian religion, the carnivore diet, environmentalism, and gender identity.
As Peterson spoke to Musk, he wore a sports coat emblazoned with icons of Christian saints.
At one point, Peterson brought up Musk’s concern with population decline. For several years, Musk has raised alarm bells about what he sees as a looming “natal crisis.” Musk has also apparently sought to do his part in reversing the trend, fathering 12 children with three different women.
Peterson asked if Musk believed that the decline in birth rates in the global west is connected to its decline in religiosity.
“There’s an argument that when a culture loses its religion that it starts to become anti-natalist and decline in numbers and potentially disappear,” Musk said.
Peterson soon turned the conversation to Richard Dawkins, famed leader of the New Atheist movement and author of the best-seller “The God Delusion.”
While Dawkins has for decades warned the world about what he believes to be the dangers of organized religion, particularly Christianity, Dawkins said in an interview in April that he considers himself a “cultural Christian.”
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“I do think that we are culturally a Christian country,” Dawkins said of the United Kingdom, “and I call myself a cultural Christian.”
