The Good, The Bad and The Irrelevant

by T.

Hey There! It's Me, Tom again!! well "God" has been in the News lately ....(pfft..."Lately"?? ...ALWAYS!!) ...and since I have this little blog, I get to share my views to the world! well... I wanted to talk "religion" (...'not what you think...) and some "shared" views, of one of my favorite bands,(well...the lead singer...) and some fascinating insights from his book. (I tend to agree with...) It's a touchy subject though ...it's about the big... G. O. D. .... and his/her existence...or "lack there of" ... I'm having my regular moral issues ....

AND .... I need to let some "stuff" out ... what BETTER way, than BLOGGING!! ... so here goes ...

...(Just a little back story on me)...

I was raised a Catholic. My Dad was VERY Catholic and religious all his life... And my "belief" is that; if ANYONE is in heaven right NOW... it is my Dad! He was a very, Good man, and he loved his family VERY much! He never really "pushed" religion on us, or anyone else (which I think is key.) Religion was good for him, and it made him a "good" man! I have a good family and my background has been full of love and understanding between him, me, my Mom and my four siblings(and everyone else under them...). My mom was not that religious. She believed in god, but, she excepted the roll my Father took as the "religious leader" for the family...My Mom loved him and is just as Loving and gracious as my Father ever was!

I, myself, had a STRONG...faith in God all through my childhood. (because of my dad) I had no real doubts until I was a Sophomore in High School....I don't know the reason for the doubt.... Maybe it was, simply, that I was smarter, and less naive to think that something, like a "god", could be in empty skies above, and "caring" about everyone in the world, like a real, life, Santa Claus...Or, maybe it was ALL the suffering in the world. The reasons, I had doubts, were not as important, as the effects it had on me. I tended to "morally drift" like a pendulum on a string. I had a steady bass though, in my father and my family,...so everything (seemed) to come out Okay. I never swung too far, one way, or another...

But It was The "Love", more than the "Belief", that kept me and my family strong. The "Love" was the bass...

..I've (personally) had strong feelings of doubt, just as much as I've had True Belief!! I (may) still believe now (....but, in "who"? or "what"?... I really, have NO idea!) I TRULY wish I could be as "unwavering" and "naive", in my belief of God, as I was at 15. But, the years and all the things I've learned along the way, have spoiled that forever...

I do still talk to god though...In the event that someone might be listening (...now...since he died... it's my father i'm talking to, more than "god"...) ....You could say that, "I'm keeping a light on, in the window". But, I won't know(if I ever "know") ... TRULY... until the day I die...

...so, that's me. Now, my views on religion itself...

Now... I don't think religion is wrong! Religion DOES have a place in the world!... I DO think, it is WRONG that people cling to it, so desperately and steadfastly! That they become selfish and repugnant towards others, who may not "believe", or may not "believe" as strongly, or in the same things, as they do!!! They are, literally, blinded by the belief! and YES...BELIEF IS A POWERFUL THING!! But, the "righteous", become "evil" quicker, than any "non-believer" EVER would!! (Because of the Strength in there convictions!!!) and I DO believe that "EVIL" is a real thing!! but It is NEVER in the form of any "demon or devil". Evil...ONLY, comes in the form of Stupidity! ... and the "Righteous" and "Non-Believer", both, take there fair share in stupidity!

....OK... now a little background on Greg Graffin (did I say "a little") ... this is from "wiki" ....

Greg Graffin is the lead Singer of the Punk Rock Band; "Bad Religion"

Greg Graffin on stage with Bad Religion in 2007 at the Starland Ballroom

...In 1980, at the age of fifteen, Graffin and a few high school classmates formed Bad Religion in Southern California's San Fernando Valley.

Graffin attended El Camino Real High School, then double-majored in anthropology and geologyas an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He went on to earn a master's degree in geology from UCLA and received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. The Ph.D. dissertation was officially a zoology Ph.D., supervised by William B. Provine at Cornell. The dissertation was entitled "Monism, Atheism and the Naturalist Worldview: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology." It is described as being essentially an evolutionary biology Ph.D. but having also relevance to history and philosophy of science.

Greg Graffin spends most of his time in upstate New York, and teaches Life Science 1 and Earth Space & Sciences 116 (paleontology) at UCLA during the winter or fall quarters of each school year. According to a June 2008 interview with Bad Religion bassist Jay Bentley, Graffin will be teaching there from January to March 2009.

Greg Graffin received the Harvard Secular Society's "Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism" on April 26, 2008. During the award ceremony he played some acoustic versions of Bad Religion songs as well as songs from his solo career.

...(So..."a Very, Smart Man"! .... for a Punk Rock Singer!!...*wink*) ... and VERY much an naturalist ...

Preston Jones, a historian at the Christian John Brown University in Arkansas, sent Graffin an e-mail asking about one of his songs, and Graffin replied. Their resulting year-long e-mail exchange was published as a book in 2006, entitled "Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity"....

Here are some parts from the book: "Is Belief in God, Good, Bad or Irrelevant?":

I am convinced that, in time, as we abolish the myth that truth is something larger than our naturalistic investigations, fewer and fewer people will find it necessary to subscribe to the supernaturalistic.


I interviewed the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins about this topic and he put it this way: Things "out there" that haven't been discovered yet are "waiting to be drawn into embrace of naturalism. "

There is no metaphysical reality to God. God is an epiphenomenon of the human brain.

Evolution still hasn't caught on universally, particularly in the USA where children are taught ancient creation stories instead of modern evolution stories. I predict it will be another 100 years, if education isn't totally corrupted, before Americans understand and accept Darwinism.

In any event, children grow up and become university professors and join psychology departments. Then they write books with theses like "god exists in our neurons" or some other nonsense, completely mudding the issue of metaphysics.

If God is no more than neurons in action, God doesn't exists! It is the burden of the theist to demonstrate that God exists outside the neurons.

Attempting to show that the universe is elaborately designed doesn't discount evolution to any degree and it certainly doesn't suggest to me that there is a God. It just means some very elaborate things can materialize given enough time.

The focus on ultimate meaning is a story told to us as we develop that ultimate meaning is more important than proximate meaning.

I feel fine not having any need for ultimate explanations. It might be the key to my happiness, in fact!

As long as Christian theology has no satisfying answer to human suffering, it is at a terrible disadvantage. That is why so amny intellectuals have moved away from it as a belief system, and even the religious intelligentsia offer an uncomfortable explanation of suffering. "God's ways are mysterious." It simply isn't a satisfying intellectual explanation.


Atrocities are a part of human cicilization and are the result of ignorance about human nature. Until naturalistic investigation, there was no way to understand human nature. But that will change in the coming centuries. Human behavior will be better understood and, hopefully, suffering will be minimized.


Naturalism depends on science, which in turn is anti-authoritarian because any momentary new discovery will overturn the entire theoretical structure. But it has to be repeatable. Do an experiment. Repeat it. It has powers of convincing and it makes you feel good! Especially when it solves difficult puzzles about the world. Knowledge is the cure for the disgruntled.

The child's brain develops and is highly susceptible to stories during the first seven years. There is a strong tendency, as the neurons are creating their interconnections, for a child to absorb the beliefs of a parent. The child creates a worldview in this manner and modifies it through later education.



We are at a transitional period in the intellectual history of the United States(and perhaps the world). The average citizen depends less on, and reads less of, the Bible while at the same time is more knowledgeable about the natural world than ever before. This will continue, and will probably move theology even father to the back burner.



Theology benefits from muddle. Science cannot work with muddle. Experiments depends on clarity and are free from "noise ".


Theology can continue to assert itself in the face of muddle because at its core is the concept that keeps all its followers in a state of confusion: "The ways of God are mysterious."

Of course ignorance is lenient, and if we close our eyes to science, or we fail to learn about biological phenomena (such as neuroscience) we can readily believe that we have special powers of free will. We "feel" free. Unless, of course, you are among the large proportion of humans on this planet who are seriously suffering. Theology depends on such ignorance.

...so, "am I being supported in my views" ... perhaps .... "GOD ONLY KNOWS!!!" pz-out! .t.