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" I don't mind if other people call me an atheist, but I call myself a naturalist. Atheism doesn't tell you much about what I do believe in; the term naturalist opens up the discussion better. "
Greg Graffin
You
Believe
Me
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" We delude ourselves into believing that morality comes from somewhere else, whereas in reality we behave as we've been told to behave. "
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" I've known a lot of people who were punkers who went on to get academic degrees. Very few of them, however, continued their active role in the punk community. Most of them hung up their leather jacket when they did so. "
Greg Graffin
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Leather
People
" I would say there's a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It's written for the common man. "
Greg Graffin
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" One of the things that all religions have is a narrative of doomsday. There has to be some kind of overarching fear of the future. If there wasn't, none of the religions could invoke this important thing - that science has no evidence of, by the way - called free will. "
Greg Graffin
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Future
Important
" When I was a teenager, science meshed with my developing ideals - such as the challenge to authority that was central to punk rock. In science, anyone from any walk of life could make a discovery that would overturn prevailing hypotheses. And that was a cause for celebration among scientists. "
Greg Graffin
Rock
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Life
" My science teachers always encouraged their classes to 'go out and discover something' because all scientific endeavors depend on observation and experimentation. Through such pursuits, anyone can find something new to science, and if it's truly novel, the entire edifice of science might have to be restructured. "
Greg Graffin
Find
Depend
Always
" People are still very uncomfortable with the idea that humans are not specially created species. I believe we are a fantastic species. But we are not created specially. That's very hard for people to accept in their day-to-day routine. "
Greg Graffin
People
Believe
Routine
" I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that. "
Greg Graffin
Religion
Me
Kid
" If you go back far enough and get a wider enough picture of history, we have let go of many things that follow a religious narrative. We don't burn witches anymore. Most people would consider that barbaric. We don't sacrifice human beings, which was a religious act practiced by numerous cultures on this planet. "
Greg Graffin
History
Picture
People
" I was never raised with the traditional story of creation in religion, and because of that I think I had a lot of questions. And evolution, the evolutionary narrative, helped provide some of that for me. "
Greg Graffin
Think
Religion
Story
" I've written almost 200 songs with Bad Religion. No matter where you look in our history, the focus has been trying to instill some of these disturbing realities about the world, some of the implications of evolution into an artistic format that can be interpreted by people who may never study evolution. "
Greg Graffin
History
Focus
People
" Ideologically, the pursuit of science is not that different from the ideology that goes into punk rock. The idea of challenging authority is consistent with what I have been taught as a scientist. "
Greg Graffin
Science
Rock
Punk
" You can look at Bad Religion, and, really, almost everything I've ever done was an exercise in creativity. I've always had a desire to challenge and question authority, and that's where the fire inside comes from. I challenged authority out of a desire to make things better, not to be nihilistic about it. "
Greg Graffin
Fire
Religion
Challenge
" In the 1970s, we had Carl Sagan, and he was so suave with his turtleneck and his tweed jacket. And he was, you know, he made science look cool. And in punk rock, we haven't had that. We haven't had the Carl Sagan of punk. "
Greg Graffin
Know
Cool
You
" I grew up playing football since the day I could walk; some of my greatest memories of childhood are playing touch football in all kinds of weather with my best friends. That's a part of the American experience that no corporation can destroy. "
Greg Graffin
Memories
Football
Day
" Naturalism teaches one of the most important things in this world. There is only this life, so live wonderfully and meaningfully. "
Greg Graffin
Things
Important
Life
" I have great hope and faith, but it's a humanistic faith based in facts; you have to believe that facts exist. We can all arrive at the same facts if we engage in the process of experimentation, observation, and verification, which can solve more of the world's major problems than a debate over whether God does or doesn't exist. "
Greg Graffin
Problems
Faith
God
" Science is the first expression of punk, because it doesn't advance without challenging authority. It doesn't make progress without tearing down what was there before and building upon the structure. "
Greg Graffin
Building
Progress
Science
" If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It's a gang mentality. "
Greg Graffin
Then
God
Gang
" There are so many ways to characterize evolutionary success. If one criterion is the number of millions of years that the species persists, we're still just infants. We're way too young of a species to tell if we were a creative fluke or if we have any staying power. "
Greg Graffin
Creative
Power
Success
" It's not a random chance that we have Alanis Morissette. She didn't evolve out of a null and void. She came from a former template. She borrowed styles and sounds from a very limited set of other artists. "
Greg Graffin
Void
Chance
Evolve
" I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious people and who knew more about nature than most of us. These were great naturalists; people I would admire for their knowledge of natural science given the time. "
Greg Graffin
Nature
Knowledge
Great
" I think English punk died in '79 or '80. Maybe '82 at the latest. As far as American punk goes, it wasn't the same as English punk. It wasn't a working-class movement that was protesting the conditions under which this class had to work. I don't think American punk ever died. "
Greg Graffin
Movement
American
Think
" Bad Religion took a long time to develop into gold-record-status artists. Along the way we learned and applied our knowledge, and Atlantic helped us every step of the way, since 1993. "
Greg Graffin
Time
Religion
Long
" So much of the habitat destruction and pollution is based on the simple principle that we somehow have been given free license over other species to degrade the planet. "
Greg Graffin
Over
Pollution
Simple
" Unfortunately, the average guy on the street believes that studying evolution leads to atheism. "
Greg Graffin
Evolution
Street
Studying
" I guess rock stars are role models for the kids who listen to that music. My role models have all been geologists - you know, the guys who are doing fieldwork until they're 70. "
Greg Graffin
Know
Doing
Music
" Unfortunately, science cannot be reduced to short, catchy phrases. And if this is all that the general public can comprehend, it's no wonder that we spend so much of our time in the interminable debate about belief in God, or lack thereof. "
Greg Graffin
Science
Short
Debate
" I definitely was attracted to similar things in punk and science. They both depend on a healthy dose of skepticism. "
Greg Graffin
Science
Punk
Healthy
" I view music as entertainment. When I'm on stage, I don't look at that as a platform for sharing ideology. Otherwise I'd be a zealot myself. That's why, when people ask me, 'Do you think you can change the world through your music?' I say, 'I doubt it.' "
Greg Graffin
Myself
Music
Change