Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God
Greg Graffin, Steve Olson
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0061828513
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
“Take one man who rejects authority and religion, and leads a punk band. Take another man who wonders whether vertebrates arose in rivers or in the ocean….Put them together, what do you get? Greg Graffin, and this uniquely fascinating book.” —Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel
Anarchy Evolution is a provocative look at the collision between religion and science, by an author with unique authority: UCLA lecturer in Paleontology, and founding member of Bad Religion, Greg Graffin. Alongside science writer Steve Olson (whose Mapping Human History was a National Book Award finalist) Graffin delivers a powerful discussion sure to strike a chord with readers of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion or Christopher Hitchens God Is Not Great. Bad Religion die-hards, newer fans won over during the band’s 30th Anniversary Tour, and anyone interested in this increasingly important debate should check out this treatise on science from the god of punk rock.
Cheiffetz, who read numerous revisions of the book and expertly navigated it. Olga Gardner Galvin did a great job of copyediting the manuscript. My episodic academic life has been enhanced by numerous people, but I thank particularly Jay Phelan, Mark Gold, Will Provine, Warren Allmon, Fritz Hertel, Peter Vaughn, Laurie Vitt, and Paul Abramson for being that rare combination of academic colleagues and great friends. To the UCLA administrators in the “front office”—Tracy Newman, Lily Yanez, and
not static; they continually change. What I was interested in was systematics—the relationship between fossils and modern-day organisms. Have you ever met anyone with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure rock bands? I knew a group of people in Los Angeles who spent their time browsing the used bins at record shops back in the days when music was recorded on vinyl (which is making a comeback these days, even though most kids have never heard anything other than compressed 128-kilobit-per-second
achieved when writing a song or recording in a studio. When a singer at a punk-rock concert throws himself on top of the outstretched hands of an ecstatic audience, the act symbolizes the bond of not only trust but common feeling that has been established between them. I’ve rarely jumped off stage since I “retired from the pit” early in my singing career. But I distinctly remember the feeling of synergy that overcame me in my youthful performances. When I jumped, I trusted that the audience
Christmas break short and flew out to play the concert, determined to fly back to the East Coast the morning after the show to prepare for another semester of laboratory teaching and graduate study. As was my custom, I showed up at the venue after the opening acts, Pennywise and NOFX, had taken the stage. When I arrived “backstage” (it was just a movie theater that had been rented out for one night to host the Bad Religion concert, so there wasn’t a dressing room or production area), I heard one
a healthy relationship with their fans, some bands exploit their previous popularity and squeeze every last bit of loyalty from fans who grew tired of the “same old song” long ago. We approach our fans with the same respect I try to extend to the natural world. I am pretty sure they will turn out for our next concert if I remain committed to improving my skills and musical craft, just as I know those hemlocks will provide me with shade and solace so long as I continue to clip the parasitic vines