“Because sciences tend to think of themselves as something as far away as possible from religion, as having freed themselves from God. To an extent that’s true.

“Because sciences tend to think of themselves as something as far away as possible from religion, as having freed themselves from God. To an extent that’s true. But in the process, they tend to generate these big stories, big mythologies, about the origins and the ends of the world. And conjure characters who are heroes, gods, and monsters. I started tracking the way that the natural sciences themselves generate new ways of understanding the world that, a couple centuries ago, we would have called religion.” This aspect of the interview, to me, was far more interesting than anything to do with Elon Musk. I also was not aware that Nietzsche had called scientists "priests of the modern world." So it seems that even in the realm of space exploration--and I can hardly think of an area that seems to have been more insulated from religion--humans just don't seem to be able to help themselves but to keep reintroducing the religious and the supernatural (whether it be the Apollo 8 astronauts reading from Genesis or current NASA advisors checking to make sure they account for beings on other planets that might communicate through "shamanic states").