Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant by Greg Graffin and Some Asshole

I saw this book come across the shelves, and it caught my eye. I recognized the name Greg Graffin but couldn't place it right away. It turns out he's the lead singer of Bad Religion.

Not that books by musicians are usually awesome. Or even readable. But Graffin is a little different. He has a PHd, and if you listen to some of his songs you pretty quickly pick up on the fact that he's not really hot on the whole churchy thing. It's kind of a natural match that he express his opinions on god, sort of like George Clinton writing a book about weed or Toby Keith writing a book about bad beards.

The book is pulled from an email correspondence between a college professor and Graffin. The professor (a god-y guy) contacts Graffin by email, and then keeps contacting him until he sort of badgers him into discussing religion.

After a short time, it's pretty cyclical. Not that the correspondence itself is poorly written, but all you see here in book form is the same stupid discussion that's been going on forever.

For example:

Professor: Why would people tip at a restaurant in France, where they will never be again, if not for God?

Graffin: I can't answer definitively, but likely there is some brain chemistry going on that makes us be nice to each other.

Professor: It can't be explained, so it must be God!

Graffin: No! Just because it's not explained yet doesn't mean it's god.

In the portion I read, Graffin did make one pretty solid point. He said that science has come so far in the last 100 years that the only thing left for religion to handle is morality, which is why they spend so much time on it.

I guess these sorts of books just don't do much for me. Richard Dawkins, clearly an atheist, doesn't really help the atheist cause, in my opinion. He just sets up a bunch of hurdles, which are overcome and then used as further proof of god=great. At some point you have to pick your battles, and when you are talking to someone who genuinely believes that a bearded man in the sky created dinosaur bones and buried them in the ground in order to be uncovered and to test our faith, you're probably wasting your time.

I recommend listening to this WTF podcast where Marc Maron and a couple comedians visit the creationism museum. In fact, I recommend listening to that instead of reading this pretty much as a rule. Now THAT’S entertainment.