Faith
and Reason:
Artists
and Professors Examine God’s Place in America.
Whether it’s jazz, hip-hop, or rock, music is often born
of the two headed beast of religion and politics. While in the
hands of the much-maligned Bush Administration, the country has
seen an explosion of politically fueled records. And given the
influence of religion on today’s divided political landscape,
it’s no surprise that many musicians have also been grappling
with notions about God.
With over two
decades in one of music’s most influential punk bands, Bad
Religion frontman Greg Graffin has been one of the most outspoken
voices on religion in society. Holding a master’s in geology
from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Cornell University, Graffin will soon
pack up the road gear from this year’s Warped Tour and head
to UCLA where he teaches life science courses. After completing
his dissertation, Graffin has continued a project (cornellevolutionproject.org)
that examines leading evolutionary biologists and the degrees
to which they believe in traditional religion and/or naturalism
and the philosophical implications on their studies.
After examining
several questionnaires, Graffin was surprised to find that while
the majority of evolutionary biologists reject notions of traditional
religion, they consider their personal beliefs in naturalism as
something distinct from their studies. Were biologists acquiescing
to a religion that, in America at least, embraces a virgin birth
and resurrection from the dead? In actuality, the majority of
biologists who responded to his survey seemed apathetic about
the religiosity of evolution – many didn’t see any
necessary conflict between science and religion. The majority
agreed with the statement: “I keep my beliefs about morality
and ethics separate from my practice and teaching of evolution.”
Graffin was most put off by the political consequences of self-censorship.
“They worry that the public association of evolution with
atheism, or at least non-religion, will hurt evolutionary biology,”
he said in a recent interview with Paste. Offended primarily
by what he calls the “intellectual dishonesty” of
compatibilism, Graffin contends that “there is no way to
reconcile the two viewpoints, so quit trying to make them compatible
when they’re not.” Graffin included interviews in
his dissertation in which scientists asked whether it was their
responsibility to re-educate society. Graffin’s response
was pointed: If evolutionary biologists won’t do it, who
will?
It’s this
intense desire to uncover the inner workings of religion and modern
society that drew Preston Jones, a Bad Religion fan and Christian
professor at John Brown University, into correspondence with Graffin.
Last year, a collection of email exchanges between the two was
published, entitled Is Belief in God, Good, Bad or Irrelevant
: A Professor and Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism
& Christianity. When looking back at the intense months
of their discussions, Professor Jones thinks fondly of the experience
of learning about Graffin’s worldview, and vice versa. In
a 2006 article in Christianity Today, Jones remembers
the way their relationship changed his outlook on his faith: “In
those months of dialogue I also saw the devastation wrought by
the passion for pseudoscientific theories on natural history among
some Christians. Many of my students believe that six-day creationism
is an essential Christian belief – that if the first chapters
of Genesis can't be taken literally, then the whole Bible is a
fraud. What tragic nonsense! Before Greg and I corresponded, I
didn't care. ‘You wanna believe the Earth was created six
thousand years ago? Whatever.’ But Greg helped me see that
this kind of gaping ignorance promotes the perception that theologically
conservative Christians are the enemies of learning.”
A lack of cohesion
definitely hurts the cause of organized religion. On this, both
Jones and other proponents of religion within musical circles
agree. But does this lack of cohesion displace the notion of God?
Does it prove God irrelevant? After all, not all atheists agree
with fellow atheists, and that doesn’t even delve into the
larger agnostic demographic. Graffin’s concern with organized
religion is that it misshapes and institutes destructive principles:
“It’s dangerous to believe in something that has no
reality, because then you can believe in anything just to save
your own skin,” he says. “What would society look
like without religion? It would look about what it looks like
today, except there would be a lot less argument and fanaticism.”
For Tim Lambesis, lead vocalist and founding member of As I Lay
Dying, Christianity is scientific in that, for him, it
operates more on reason and less on blind faith. Taking a two
day break from their current Warped Tour stint alongside Bad Religion
and hundreds of other bands, Lambesis spoke by phone from Oregon:
“I see a lot of people that consider themselves religious
who are driven entirely by emotion and the way they feel about
God or whatever it is they worship. And I think that's very poor
reasoning, to love somebody or to worship somebody. I use the
word 'feel', which is funny, because I'm talking about how feelings
aren't a good reason to do things…I think faith and reason
are very [much] related. I think that people need to evaluate
why they believe what they do and not just believe because it's
what someone told them to do. Believe because it's what you've
researched and found to be the absolute truth…for me, I
believe in Christianity because I believe it's the truth, but
I think that truth itself is more important than the idea of religion
or any sort of spirituality.”
But for Graffin,
not only does organized religion fail to successfully align itself
with natural science, the notion of faith has become corrupted.
Contrary to many atheists, Graffin contends that the basic concept
of faith is valid, but that the problem with organized religion
is that it relies on an abstraction. “Faith in your partner,
your fellow men, your friends, is very important,” explains
Graffin, “because without it there's no mutual component
to your relationship, and relationships are important. So faith
plays an important role, but faith in people you don't know, faith
in religious or political leaders or even people on stages, people
who are popular in the public eye…you shouldn't have faith
in those people. You should listen to what they have to say and
use it. It might give you some ideas on how to view the world,
but ultimately you have to base your views on evidence.”
So where does
this leave us? Doesn’t the implication that organized religion
has no place in society mean that it doesn’t belong in music?
And doesn’t this require the same sort of self-censorship
among artists that Graffin has so adamantly opposed in his dissertation
on evolutionary biologists? For Graffin, twenty years of Bad Religion
albums hold less value than you’d expect. “I view
music as entertainment,” he says. “When I’m
on stage, I don’t look at that as a platform for sharing
ideology. Otherwise I’d be a zealot myself. That’s
why, when people ask me ‘Do you think you can change the
world through your music?’ I say, ‘I doubt it.’”
All those years of pointedly political and philosophical records
seem to say otherwise; after all, it was a Bad Religion song that
led Professor Jones to first email Graffin. In the end, the answer
to whether God is good, bad, or irrelevant is a decision we must
make for ourselves.
By
Paul Bickler
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