Top 35 Greg Graffin Quotes

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.

Bad Religion has never been about criticizing people who are Christian. But we’ve always been about pointing out the irony and contradictions in Christian theology and the more extreme versions of Christians that seek to challenge modern secularism.

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

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

Most songwriters who have been lucky enough to have their song on the radio or be heard widely don’t know anything about science. The best songs have a strong dose of metaphor. Most songs about science don’t have that. Like ‘She Blinded Me With Science.’ It’s a stupid song, no offense to Thomas Dolby.

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.

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.

As a scientist, of course, we have to believe there is no supernatural. There are only natural entities in the universe. And those are the things that we study as natural scientists.

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.

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.

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.

I don’t bill myself as an atheist but as a naturalist. Naturalism is a belief system. A lot of scientists bristle at that. We all have to believe we can find the truth. Evidence is my guide. I rely on observation, experimentation and verification.

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.

I struggled to keep one foot in music and one in academia. I had worked on my Ph.D. for three years full time before I realized Bad Religion could be a legitimate career.

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.

If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It’s a gang mentality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The naturalist worldview is a good way to feel grounded and feel part of something that isn’t based on fairy tales. It’s based on observable facts in the human and in the biological history of the planet. I think that can be a source for comfort.

I’ve always been on a quest to use science in an artful way.

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.

Academic scientists aren’t generally interested in books for the public. So when one comes out, the authors can’t expect much praise from scientists. My goal both as a singer and an instructor is to educate through provocation and entertainment.

A fossil is so powerful. It’s moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil… not the cross.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Science is very vibrant. There are always new observations to be found. And it’s all in the interest in challenging the authority that came before you. That’s consistent with the punk rock ethos that suggests that you should not take what people say at face value.

People who are creative, who do it as a lifestyle, it’s kind of silly to make that claim you’re done, because you just never know when that spark is going to hit you again. You can’t necessarily predict how you’re going to feel. In ten years I’ll be 58, and I might still feel like making a punk record.

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.