Book Review: Greg Graffin's 'Anarchy Evolution'

A couple months ago, I attended a book signing at Powell's Books for another book in the growing line of popular defenses of atheism. I'd already read one of the foundational books in the atheist movement: Sam Harris's "The End of Faith". Harris's book is a powerful, expansively cited, and tightly woven argument that one need not feel nervous about expressing their atheism publicly. Atheism, founded on the reasonable argument that we should build our beliefs about the world through observation open to public scrutiny and testability, has great advantages over faith-based belief systems, including the yielding of less radical and dangerous ideologies. In these times of extreme religious fanaticism, often leading to terrorism, I can't help but be persuaded by Harris's argument, although there seems to me something socio-political going on in extreme and dangerous ideologies that Harris is not addressing - something that would still exist should the world be cleansed of faith-based belief systems. Be that as it may be, there's a growing dialogue about atheism in the United States and it has some powerful and persuasive thinkers behind it. Enter Greg Graffin.

Honestly, I would not have attended the book signing or read the book if Greg Graffin was not the singer of Bad Religion. If there's one thing I've thought a lot about throughout my life, it's religion and atheism, as I'm a 'recovering Catholic'. But Greg Graffin is a legend of a man - a founder of one of the most influential punk bands to come out of southern California, a graduate from UCLA with a Master's degree in geology, a graduate from Cornell University with a PhD in Zoology, and a professor at UCLA. That's an amazing list of achievements and ones particularly dear to my heart as academics and music have been very powerful throughout my life. Needless to say, I was right there at the book signing, not sure what it would be like.

Greg Graffin looks way more like a university professor than he does a punk rock icon. He came to the book signing wearing a button-down, collared shirt tucked into kaki pants, and his hair is balding on the top of his head. He's very tall and his eyes are intense. He has a great sense of humor and he thinks about what he's going to say before he blurts it out, making therefore thoughtful comments. One of my favorite parts on his talk about the book was when he fielded a question by a young fan: "Why write this book when your songs are so deep and well thought out? Are you just trying to reach a wider audience?" Graffin thought about it for a second, and said that as an artist, he doesn't feel it's necessary to justify anything you produce. It's wrong to corner him as a 'musician', thus closing the door to other avenues of creative expression. He did not justify his book. There's no 'plan' behind it - like trying to reach another audience. It's just the latest of his creative outpourings, and he's offering it, just as he does with his music, for others to enjoy and think about. This response captures a lot of the sentiment behind his writing: Graffin is a 'renaissance man' - his interests are wide and varied, and the thing they share in common is their disdain for authority and stereotyping, and their foundation in wonder about the world.

Graffin does not like to consider himself an atheist. He is one - he does not believe in God. But he likes to label himself as a naturalist, because that doesn't just talk about what he is not, but rather what he is - a person believing that human beings are a part of nature, not an exalted or advanced species, that all parts of nature are subjected to evolutionary processes, and that we can come to understand those evolutionary processes through sharing information and collecting and comparing data. Here are some of Graffin's own words: "For me, evolution provides the context for our lives. Yes, evolution has implications that can make us deeply uneasy. But on important questions we must seek the truth, even if the truth is difficult to accept. Naturalism can provide the foundation for building a coherent and consistent worldview on which we can base important decisions. In fact, I would contend, it is the only perspective that can secure both our happiness as individuals and our survival as a species" (7). His book is basically an investigation of what naturalism tells us about the world and how it can be internalized to offer guidance.

Graffin spends time outlining two important features of evolution: tragedy and creativity. Graffin says, "a tragic sense of life is an inevitable accompaniment to a naturalist worldview" (118). The reason is easy to see - evolution does not strive toward perfection: individuals are always competing for survival and always undergo traumatic changes. We've experienced this ourselves, and we hear of it happening to other humans and species every day. No naturalist would ignore the tragic side of life. Graffin says, "When tragedy strikes, no individual is prepared. It appears to be a simple matter of luck which individuals survive" (134). Such tragedy can be accounted for in a naturalist perspective. By accepting it rather than explaining it using a teleological argument, naturalists don't face the great paradox theists must grapple with. "Anyone who is a theist and believes in a caring, responsive, and powerful God must come to terms with religion's central problem: the presence of so much suffering and misery in nature" (135). By accepting tragedy in one's worldview with no grand explanation behind it, one's empathy can grow, bringing people to a more understanding, supportive, and caring relationship with each other. This stands in contrast to the naive assumption that atheists are uncaring and heartless. The acceptance of tragedy in life will often produce quite the opposite effect, as it has with Graffin.

The other great feature of evolution is creativity. Graffin writes, "In the naturalist worldview, creativity emerges from natural laws that operate spontaneously. Matter and energy come together to produce an endless diversity of physical forms and phenomena, some familiar to us, some strange and unexpected" (144). He then goes on to give a plausible (theoretical) history of the world and the origins of life starting from the Big Bang, followed by "a period of creative ferment that will never be fully explored", now at 13.5 billion years and counting. Graffin has little to say about time before the Big Bang, and he's okay with that. Graffin accepts the immensity and mystery of the universe, and as a naturalist he explores and tries to gather as much data as possible, trying to put together the most reasonable worldview he can muster. As the remarkably diverse fossil record shows, and in looking around at the incredible biodiversity existing on this planet, such a worldview obviously includes an amazing amount of creativity in the unfolding of sentient life.

The book, in addition to all this, talks a lot about the evolution of Bad Religion and Graffin's personal life. An extremely motivated person, Graffin was at one time a Phd student at Cornell, touring with his band during the summers, recently married, and sharing the responsibilities of being a new parent. The result was a failed marriage and a serious reevaluation of his priorities, of which he came out a stronger and more adjusted person. But it's just incredible to contemplate the life he's led and the hard work involved. Graffin's passion for music and life just flow out of the book. Already a well-read atheist, I wasn't blown away by his remarks on theism and atheism, but I was very impressed by his nuanced understanding of evolution and biology and by his punk rock spirit. His chapter on a meaningful afterlife was downright inspiring: "It's my firm conclusion that human meaning comes from humans, not from a supernatural source. After we die, our hopes for an afterlife reside in the social networks that we influenced while we were alive. If we influence people in a positive way - even if our social web is only as big as a nuclear family - others will want to emulate us and pass on our ideas, manners, or lifestyle to future generations. This is more than enough motivation for me to do good things in my life and teach my children to do the same" (247). I totally recommend the book, and the listening of Bad Religion albums.