Darwin was punk

Greg Graffin co-founded the band Bad Religion in Los Angeles in 1980, when he was 17. Their 1994 album “Stranger Than Fiction” sold more than half a million copies in the US, popularising their potent mix of harmony, high-speed noise and articulate, provocative lyrics. Meanwhile, Graffin pursued his academic interests. In 2003, he earned a PhD in zoology from Cornell University.

Graffin received the Rushdie Award for Cultural Humanism from Harvard University’s Humanist Chaplaincy in 2008 for his work as a rock star and scientist, and for being an “ideal role model for the nation’s millions of non-religious youth”. He teaches evolution at Cornell, while remaining the only constant member of Bad Religion. The band still tours and released their last album, “Age of Unreason”, in 2019.

In your 2022 memoir, “Punk Paradox”, you say you consider Darwin to have a “punk” approach. That’s quite a startling way to describe a middle-class, English, Victorian scientist.

Yeah, I think what appealed to me was, it was at a time when I was going through my early punk transformation, and of course, when you’re a teenager, you’re kind of self-conscious about everything. I was very concerned by the fact that the classic “English punk” was, you know, from a working-class family and a street kid who didn’t have much – and that wasn’t my experience. In America, many of the punks were also street punks who were kicked out of their houses by their parents and had some serious problems – that was kind of the punk stereotype.

So I thought, wait a minute, here’s a guy in Victorian England, who basically overturned hundreds of years, thousands of years of dogma and dogmatic thinking.

I thought, that’s a different type of revolution that’s much more appealing to me – because here I am raised as an academic, my parents were both academics, I wasn’t kicked out of the house. So I thought that, actually, it’s just as valid.

You managed to immerse yourself in an authentic punk scene without sacrificing the academic side and your interests in birdwatching and geology and all the rest. How did you balance that?

Well, it’s called adaptation, you know – if I can borrow another term from evolution. As a kid, you don’t really set out to create a unique lifestyle. You know, you just sort of adapt to the conditions.

There were expectations of me, as a person. The expectations of your family create your environment. I knew that there were strong expectations, and I don’t think it is out of line for me to say that I was doing what I was told to do in a way that kept me on the straight and narrow, if you will.

You say that Monty Python was an influence, and you acted out sketches in your band rehearsals.

Monty even predates my punk years, because by the time my friends and I were 10 or 11 years old our parents, who were all professors, were teaching us to be good cynical observers of society. PBS showed Monty Python every week. And our parents, you know, they wanted us to stop watching those damn cartoons and watch something that’s satirical, or something that can teach you something, something that is critical of society. So Monty Python was a very big influence on our outlook.

Another influence that surprised me was “Jesus Christ, Superstar”, the musical. It’s a subversive take on religion but it’s also the work of Lord Lloyd-Webber and Sir Tim Rice, both establishment figures and known for their support of the Conservative party.

Yeah, maybe I attributed more significance to it because at certain times in your developmental life you’re introduced to something and it has a very deep, lasting impact on your thinking. But I love the music. First of all, it’s a beautifully recorded album – and I’m not talking about the Broadway version, my mother purchased the original studio recording, the two-album set, and really, even as a fourth grader, a kid, I could tell that this was great sounding music and I loved the lyrics.

I could identify with the main character in Jesus Christ Superstar. You know, here was a persecuted individual. And it’s exactly what Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted, right? He wanted us to identify with the main character. And even though I didn’t know it at the time, it was a great rock-and-roll singer who was playing Jesus, it was Ian Gillen from Deep Purple. And so here’s this great and persecuted individual. And just like Charles Darwin, he came to represent someone who went against the grain, and who was the hero of a story.

If you were starting a band today, would you still call it Bad Religion? Do you still consider religion to be your antithesis, this totemic thing you’re in opposition to?

Oh, yeah, I think so. I think religion in the broadest sense is all we’ve ever identified in Bad Religion. Particularly the dogmatic elements of it. And I think today dogma is just as prevalent. I even wrote a little couplet saying that here we are in a secular world now – you know, it gets more secular every decade. But secular dogma is bad religion too.

How do you see America’s future, in terms of free thought?

Everyone talks about the great divisions in America, but from my perspective those divisions have always been there: it’s ideology versus free and open inquiry. And unfortunately the Democrats didn’t do enough to popularise free and open inquiry, because America spoke loud and clear [when they elected Donald Trump as president]: they don’t want free and open inquiry. They want doctrine and ideology. I just think that that’s a very persistent problem in our country, but to be honest with you, it’s a persistent problem in western civilisation.

You don’t think it’s a uniquely dangerous time for rationalism?

I’m in jeopardy of looking naïve, but in terms of calling it uniquely dangerous, it’s like, one problem is that if we ignore history, then we can say whatever we want about the current era and the current situation. But as you know, there have been dangerous times in the past as well.

For some reason there’s a need to press upon the reading public that these are unprecedented times. Well, in one sense, that’s a tautology, of course: They are unprecedented, they’ve never happened before. But I don’t know, is it interesting to explore the dangers of the current political climate? It’s something I will leave to the political scientists, you know?

You use punk music to express some very complex ideas around individuality and ideology and society, which isn’t what we might typically expect from punk. Was that a reaction against what other people were doing?

Well, it was part of a scene in southern California. So, you know, when you’re part of a scene, you try to embody what you perceive to be the rudiments of that scene. And I think I was – maybe because my dad was an English professor – I maybe was able to identify some of those streams of consciousness that would resonate. I don’t think it was because I was trying to construct a philosophy or anything. I was too young for that.

But you know, I will say, you triggered a memory – because you [journalists] just love to talk about Donald Trump, which is fine, but you know, the only disappointing thing to me is that every single news outlet in the country is jumping for joy because they get to talk about him literally every day.

And I’d just point to one of the first songs I ever wrote – I was only a teenager, and I believe good old Jimmy Carter was in the Oval Office at that time, and here was a liberal president, a guy who did so much good in the world, and yet I still wrote Economy, technology doesn’t really work / The guy running the government is just another jerk [from the 1982 song “Politics”]. It sounds so simplistic and so teenage! But you know, I’m still using it today. So it must’ve had legs when I wrote it.

The point is, I was not willing in those days to get into a political discussion because I didn’t see it as bearing any fruit. So I went in a different direction.

Can you tell me about your academic work?

I teach one class a year at Cornell. I teach evolution for non-majors [university students who aren’t studying evolution as their main subject], which I find a very rewarding way to exercise my intellect. It’s a challenge in the sense that, because it’s for non-majors, I really enjoy having them come in with, maybe, some of their own biases, but completely open to the foundational principles of evolution. And it’s an important science to understand.

I think every student who graduates should have certain fundamental understandings of basic science, and even though it’s a struggle to get evolution recognised as a basic science, there’s no arguing against the fact that Charles Darwin ushered in a revolutionary way of thinking that affected more than just science – it affected all of the sciences, and many of the social sciences as well.

How has science informed your music? I’m thinking about the ecological crisis, and wondering why environmental science doesn’t feed more into the songs.

Well, first of all you have to remember there are two principal songwriters in Bad Religion. And the answer I give you is not at all reflective of my partner, Brett [Gurewitz, the band’s guitarist and co-founder] – he’s got his own thoughts on the topic.

But more personally, there’s nothing in the current environmental milieu, if you will, that is particularly good or bad for songwriting. Does the rapid increase in CO2 make for a good topic? No, it doesn’t, that’s not interesting at all to me. The fact that there is CO2 in the atmosphere and that there’s a historical component to it, maybe that’s something that’s allegorical that could be seen as an element in a good song – but I just don’t think that focusing on [news] headlines has ever made for great songs.

You know, the [2003] fires in LA inspired Brett to write “Los Angeles Is Burning” [When the hills of Los Angeles are burning / Palm trees are candles in the murder wind / So many lives are on the breeze / Even the stars are ill at ease / And Los Angeles is burning]. But even though that was an actual fire, I think the best thing about the song is that it can be seen as an allegory as well.

So you tend to take the long view.

Well, yeah, in an evolutionist that’s fairly natural! But here’s the thing that’s important to remember: you call it a long view, but I’m talking about what is purely a goal of good writing, which is you look for universals. And even when you teach science, you look for things that are universal truths that you can try to teach people.

And whether you like it or not, calling the current environmental situation a “crisis” is not a universal truth. That’s doctrine, and that’s something that we try to steer clear of and let people come to their own conclusion. That’s what Bad Religion has always done.

Can we talk about your solo work? “Millport” came out in 2017, and that was your third album of country rock. What prompted you to use that style?

You probably got to know me by now – I let other people put that in the category of their choosing. But I think the word over here is “Americana”.

[These solo albums] are oriented more towards the way that I was raised, in American folk music. It was always playing in our house and it’s had an influence on me musically and I enjoy exploring it. And I was lucky enough to have the opportunities to make records in that genre with very accomplished musicians.

And meanwhile Bad Religion carries on. Do you think you’ll do it for ever?

Yeah, you know, up to a certain point. If you look at it as an opportunity, as I do, then you don’t question how long it’s going to last. You’re just grateful for the opportunity.

This article is from New Humanist’s Summer 2025 issue. Subscribe now.