This is how most of the world knows Greg Graffin, the rebellious lead singer of the legendary punk band Bad Religion. What few people know is that Graffin also received a PhD from Cornell University and teaches evolution at UCLA. Co-written with Olson, Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God (It Books; On Sale: September 28, 2010; Hardcover) weds Graffin’s experiences in punk culture and the academic world, and explores the deep connection between art, religion, and science.
As an adolescent growing up when “drugs, sex, and trouble could be had on any given night,” Graffin discovered that the study of evolution provided a framework through which he could make sense of the world. In this provocative and personal book, Graffin describes his own coming of age as an artist, as well as the formation of his naturalist worldview on questions involving God, science, and human meaning.
While the battle between religion and science is often displayed in the starkest of terms, Anarchy Evolution provides fresh and nuanced insights into the long-standing debate about atheism and the human condition. It is a book for anyone who has ever wondered if God really exists.
Greg Graffin, born in Madison, Wisconsin, obtained his Ph.D. at Cornell University in zoology, and his master’s degree at UCLA in geology. Graffin was the recipient of the Bryan Patterson prize from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists and also received the Harvard Cultural Humanism award. He has served as lecturer in life science and in paleontology at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Steve Olson is the author of Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins, which was one of five finalists for the 2002 nonfiction National Book Award and received the Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. He has been a consultant writer for the National Academy of Sciences as well as other organizations, and his writing has been featured in Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post,Scientific American, and Wired, among other publications. In September 2004 he published with two coauthors a research article in Nature that presented a fundamentally new perspective on human ancestry.
