Elon Musk grew up in a mixed-religion household; his mother is Canadian and professes to be a Christian, while his father is South African and more secular. According to those close to him, he prefers to look to science and technology as a means of solving problems and improving life on earth and beyond. He believes that religion and science need to be linked, hhe believes there should be a bi-weekly conference for scientists and theologians to discuss the implications of scientific discoveries.

Existential and philosophical questions are of particular interest to the tech billionaire, who was influenced by Douglas Adams' series of novels, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which he read as a young man. "In that book, Earth was a kind of giant computer trying to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life? The answer is 42. And what does 42 mean? Actually, the answer is the easy part. The question is the hard part, because it's been forgotten," - Musk said in a recent conversation with Alice Weidel, the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party's candidate for chancellor.

Although the news reports tended to highlight Musk's support for the AfD, the second half of the conversation focused more on philosophical and ideological issues. What is peculiar in itself is that many expect a new conservative turn in America from the Trump-Musk duo, while in Germany it is Weidel, although they are all liberals by lifestyle.

Trump's private life is well known thanks to the numerous lawsuits against him, and Musk has not hidden his 12 children from his various marriages and relationships. Less well known about Alice Weidel is that, as in the Hungarian constitution, the AfD candidate for chancellor, who in her official party platform proclaims a marriage of one man and one woman, is lesbian and married to a Ceylonese-born woman with whom she has two children.

According to their conversation neither Weidel nor Musk consider themselves Christian, despite their support for the conservative political agenda.

Weidel described herself as an agnostic who is "still in search", while Musk said that he adheres to a "philosophy of curiosity" and that his interest is focused on understanding the universe. "When I read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books, I realised that it was really a work of philosophy in a humorous form, and I think it was very insightful that we should basically try to understand the nature of the universe."

Musk professes that "we are all just figments of the universe's imagination, and if we want to create a better world, it's up to us". As he explained in the interview, he tries to "take a kind of physical view of reality", while being "open" to the idea of God, because "I assume there is some entity we can call God". However, he rejects that this "entity watches our daily actions and makes moral judgments about what we do day after day".

Does the Old Testament principle make you blind?

In light of all this, it's not surprising that Elon Musk is sceptical about Christianity and the Bible. He doesn't believe that the text of Scripture should be interpreted literally, preferring scientific evidence and research over literal interpretation of religious doctrine. Musk believes that the Bible we use today is only a fragment of the full text, and that his aim is to find the "lost books of the Bible".

This rejection of the Bible's text was also echoed in his explanation of the "an eye for an eye" principle in a conversation with Weidel about Israel's war on terror, which he said was unacceptable because it would "eventually make everyone blind".

The German politician called this a "wonderful idea".

While both expressed that Israel and the Jewish people have the right to be protected, it also turned out that this is based on the responsibility for the crimes of Germany's recent past - the crimes of Adolf Hitler, whom Alice Weidel called "a communist, socialist guy" - and the alliance of the United States with Israel today, not on any historical, and certainly not biblical, heritage.

(This strategic pro-Israel rejection of Zionism is, by the way, quite common among neo-conservatives.)

Are interstellar saviours coming?

Perhaps the most bizarre part of the conversation was when Musk expressed his views on what he sees as the future redemption of humanity. As it turns out, he's already planning not only to put a man on Mars - something he says could happen by the end of the decade - but also to create a self-sustaining colony for hundreds of thousands of people. To do this, he plans to send a huge space fleet of around a million tonnes of cargo to build a city on Mars.

He's thinking even further ahead, targeting other celestial bodies in the Solar System and then heading for other galaxies - he would be the galaxy's guidebook. This is the only way to save humanity from self-destruction or annihilation by a cosmic natural disaster.

Musk explained his view on this: 'If the archaeological record is correct, the Earth is half a billion years old, but civilisation, measured from the first writing, is only about 5,000 years old, which is about 1 millionth of the Earth's existence. So the whole of human civilisation is a tiny flash in the pan, and so we need to look at what steps we can take to ensure the long-term survival of consciousness and life as we know it. This requires us to become a multi-planetary species as quickly as possible, and thus enable the long-term survival of civilisation."

The critical threshold for the future of civilisation, he said, is when "we reach the point where the Martian colony can grow on its own, even if there are no more supply ships from Earth". Musk says that at that point, "the likely lifespan of civilisation will be dramatically greater, because there will be times when future human Martians will actually come and help and rescue us if there is an emergency. Just as America helped save the rest of the world in World War I, World War II and then the Cold War. And where would the world be if America had not helped in those three situations? So I think there's a good chance that Mars will help save the Earth at some point in the future, maybe more."

But it is not only the representatives of the colonies on Mars who can bring about the salvation of humanity in its infancy, but also the superior beings of "post-humanity" who will step out into interstellar space and collect the abandoned knowledge of civilisations that once lived there but are now extinct. "Once we have a civilization on Mars, we can expand to the rest of the solar system, to the larger asteroids like Ceres, perhaps to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and beyond, at least through the rest of the solar system. And then hopefully we will go from a multi-planetary civilization to a multi-system, multi-system civilization at some point. Then we can try to find out what the nature of the universe is. When we go and visit these distant star systems, we will discover the remains of long-dead alien civilisations," Musk explained to the enthusiastically nodding German radical right-wing politician.

Bannon: Musk is a "truly evil person"

But not everyone is thrilled with Elon Musk's vision. Former Donald Trump adviser and founder of the Breitbart news portal Steve Bannon has sharply criticised Musk in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. "I will get Elon Musk kicked out by the time he’s inaugurated," - promised Bannon, who said the billionaire is "a really evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down" - he added.

Bannon accused Musk of hypocrisy over the H-1B visa program, which is backed by several tech company executives. This program allows the US to attract international talent. However, Trump's support base strongly opposes it, saying the program helps employers hire foreign workers for lower wages instead of US citizens (Musk, who is of South African descent, was also a previous holder of such a visa.)

He said the whole H-1B visa issue is about circumventing the entire immigration system, which the "tech lords" are using for their own gain, and people are angy about that. Bannon, who went further, criticising him for his alleged racism. "Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?"

The former adviser also questioned Musk's maturity, accusing him of childish behaviour, whose only goal is to further increase his wealth.