Greg Graffin

“If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It's a gang mentality.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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 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 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.”

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

“A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil... not the cross.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Life is never static. Despite catastrophic tragedies, life has persisted in evolving new varieties of unimaginable forms. I find comfort in the narrative of evolutionary history.”

“Unfortunately, the average guy on the street believes that studying evolution leads to atheism.”

“Countries with a high percentage of nonbelievers are among the freest, most stable, best-educated, and healthiest nations on earth. When nations are ranked according to a human-development index, which measures such factors as life expectancy, literacy rates, and educational attainment, the five highest-ranked countries -- Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands -- all have high degrees of nonbelief. Of the fifty countires at the bottom of the index, all are intensly religious. The nations with the highest homicide rates tend to be more religious; those with the greatest levels of gender equality are the least religious. These associations say nothing about whether atheism leads to positive social indicators or the other way around. But the idea that atheists are somehow less moral, honest, or trustworthy have been disproven by study after study.”

“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.”