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" 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
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" One of our great thematic traditions in Bad Religion has been to question human nature. "
Greg Graffin
Human Nature
Religion
Nature
" 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
" 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
" If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It's a gang mentality. "
Greg Graffin
Then
God
Gang
" Unfortunately, the average guy on the street believes that studying evolution leads to atheism. "
Greg Graffin
Evolution
Street
Studying
" 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 want some fact-based evidence about where we came from. Things we consider mysterious need not be attributed to a deity. "
Greg Graffin
Mysterious
Need
Things
" 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'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
" You can't let your personal disposition be dictated by the world around you. "
Greg Graffin
You
Around
Personal
" 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
Community
Leather
People
" Folk music usually has an emphasis on the lyrics and melody. And those lyrics are usually relevant in some way. And it's populist in scope, which is also true of Bad Religion. So it's more meant to draw some parallels between the two. And I think even my voice and my delivery can be thought of as a little bit folky. "
Greg Graffin
Music
Voice
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
" Bad Religion's tradition has always been to try and provoke people but hopefully lead them to a better sense of who they are and what they stand for. That's supposed to make them feel better. "
Greg Graffin
Stand
Religion
People
" 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
" The vocal arrangements are a big part of the formula for a Bad Religion song - layered harmonies and background vocals. So when I start to describe the elements of Bad Religion's sound, it starts to sound like a Christmas choir. "
Greg Graffin
Christmas
Religion
Bad
" 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
" You can't take up all the music bins at a CD retail outlet with Spice Girls CDs and leave nothing for the Joan Jett catalogue. "
Greg Graffin
Nothing
Leave
Up
" The trick is: how do you talk about natural selection without implying the rigidity of law? We use it as almost an active participant, almost like a god. In fact, you could substitute the word 'god' for 'natural selection' in a lot of evolutionary writings and you'd think you were listening to a theologian. "
Greg Graffin
God
Listening
You
" 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
" 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
" 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
" In the family, in interpersonal relationships, even in friendship, faith is tremendously important. If you have a partner who you believe is a good person, then it is your duty to have faith in them until the end, despite the fact that they might have done some bad things. And you have to support and believe in your children. "
Greg Graffin
Family
Support
Faith
" 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
Free
Future
Important
" 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
" 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
" I wouldn't say there's a need for the Spice Girls, but I'd say there's a place for the Spice Girls. There's certainly a place for them, but you don't promote the Spice Girls at the expense of promoting what I think are good role models for girls. You need to create some kind of equality. "
Greg Graffin
You
Place
Good
" 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
" 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