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 GraffinI would say there's a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It's written for the common man.
Greg GraffinAs Iโve said, Iโve never believed in God, which technically makes me an atheist (since the prefix โaโ means โnotโ or โwithoutโ). But I have problems with the word โatheism.โ It defines what someone is not rather than what someone is. It would be like calling me an a-instrumentalist for Bad Religion rather than the bandโs singer. Defining yourself as against something says very little about what you are for.
Greg GraffinIf you accept learning as a dominant determination of your behavior, then all of a sudden you're open to the idea that, for instance, there are other people who are more educated than you about the environment, who you will learn from. It's kind of like you don't even have to believe that you know anything about the environment, but you do have to understand that your behavior has been determined by learning in the past.
Greg GraffinSociety has to be structured such that there are checks and balances, so that it can't be manipulated, for instance, for the profit of just some multinational company who's going to get rich on trying to legislate the environment.
Greg Graffin