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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. "

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" I bill myself as a naturalist because if you say you're a naturalist, it gives people a conversation point to talk about what you actually do believe in, instead of when you say you're an atheist, and it's really just a statement of what you don't believe in. "

Greg Graffin

Myself

People

Conversation

" 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

" 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. "

" Let's face it: There are people who are extremists in every corner of society, and whatever flag they're waving is something Bad Religion has stood against. "

" Almost everyone shuts down when science becomes too technical; you've got to infuse it with entertainment and storytelling to make it effective. From high school on, science is taught in a very dry manner, which isn't as potent. "

" 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. "

" Every place has its own punk flavor, but they all borrowed ideas from SoCal. It's still a vibrant scene creeping into every crevasse of youth culture. When you hear grunge, you think of the '90s, but when you hear L.A. punk, it's timeless. "

" 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

Kid

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" From a very early age, I was in tune with pop radio, and most of this listening was done driving. We had an old '67 or '65 Buick LeSabre, and whenever we would drive around, I would actually stick my head right against the speakers in the back and sing along to the music. "

" 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. "

" It's been an objective of mine since I started writing songs to include both intellect and energy. "

" The thread of culture that runs through the entire history of punk is also a dedication to challenging the authoritarian. "

" Whether you reach a lot of people or have a profound impact on a few people, their memories of you are your afterlife. "

" You can't let your personal disposition be dictated by the world around you. "

" Naturalism teaches one of the most important things in this world. There is only this life, so live wonderfully and meaningfully. "

" I got interested in palaeontology and vertebrate history - sparked by books on human evolution - then vertebrate evolution. Studying with palaeontologists kindled my interest in fieldwork. "

" 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. "

" We delude ourselves into believing that morality comes from somewhere else, whereas in reality we behave as we've been told to behave. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I want some fact-based evidence about where we came from. Things we consider mysterious need not be attributed to a deity. "

" I definitely was attracted to similar things in punk and science. They both depend on a healthy dose of skepticism. "

" One of our great thematic traditions in Bad Religion has been to question human nature. "

" I would say there's a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It's written for the common man. "

" 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. "

" 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. "