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Green Day has been one of the best, and most enduring, mainstream punk rock bands for the last decade, and their most recent CD, American Idiot, recently won the Best Rock Album award at the Grammys. These punkers have sold millions of albums, they've played Woodstock, they've been on the cover of Rolling Stone. They're the picture of success … but where are they spiritually? Author Doug Van Pelt wanted to know, so he got bass player Mike Dirnt on the phone to talk about Jesus. In the following excerpt from an interview that appears in Van Pelt's book, Rock Stars on God: 20 Artists Speak Their Minds About Faith (Relevant Books), Dirnt says he's "down with JC"—but also that he's an "optimistic agnostic." How's that add up?

Mike Dirnt believes he evolved from chimps

Do you believe in evolution?

Mike Dirnt Yeah man. You know, when Beck said, "In a time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey," well I was also a monkey. I'm sure of it. I just feel it in my bones."

Is that what you base your belief on?

DirntYou know what? I'm an optimistic agnostic. I think the second we die, within a matter of seconds, everybody else arrives, and that's the party, and you live your hell on earth. I don't know.

What do you think of Jesus Christ?

DirntI'm down with J.C. He's cool. Whatever.

What do you think of his claims to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that "No one comes to the Father but by me"?

DirntSounds a little mafioso to me. You know, to each their own. Everyone has the right to believe in whatever they believe in. Like I said, I'm an optimist, so I believe in some sort of life after death, I don't know what kind.

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Have you ever thought about how there's this guy here, everybody says he was a great teacher and all. He went around saying he's the only way to the Father, and then he died for that statement.

DirntI'm sure that he did. I'm sure that a lot of people have died for that, but I'm sure more people have died arguing over it since then. You know, millions. And when I hear people say that everybody in the world has heard of Jesus Christ, it makes me want to puke, in all honesty. I'm not gonna base my religion, well, I base my religion on my own spirituality, and "what goes around comes around." If there is a God or anything like that, there's nothing I can certainly do about it. I believe we're all part of the Force. It's like the Force. There's Luke, there's Leia, and there's us.

Well, everybody bases their beliefs on something …

Dirnt"All my religious beliefs are based on Star Wars.

How does all the success feel to you?

DirntIt's nice to know that people can get our music, and that people relate to it, and that we can go all over the world and the people that we play to can buy our records. The exciting part to me is when you go somewhere that you've never been before, or you go somewhere that you have been before, and you feel the connection. There's a camaraderie. Everyone's there for the music. I think it's great. I don't stop and look back and lay on my laurels at all. We're all too busy thinking about what's going on in the future. Not the far future, though, mainly today till tonight.

How do you respond to the critics who say, "Green Day isn't punk"?

DirntI agree (laughs). It's kind of an oxymoron to say "punk rock" and "hockey arena" at the same time. We definitely come from a certain element, and we have a certain idea of what we like. We carry our morals, our ideals, our ethics, everything with us from where we come from. But I can't say I am the same person as who I was five years ago. I'd be kidding myself. I think that's the most important thing you can do to be a real person—is to be honest with yourself.

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