Why does every lyric site on the Internet (including this one) completely mangle the meter of the second verse of this song. I tried several times to figure out how that verse goes just by reading it, but just couldn't get it without listening to the song asking with reading it. It should be like this'

You're so shallow...
How can your romance hope to be the veil of...
An ersatz human nature that can pacify...
But never slept well ..
When there's the pretension of living a lie?

i think you both einstein and brad really did not understand dawkins, skinner and behaviorism.
but i too think that the song is about different views about how we make decisions.

I'm pretty sure this is the only rock song in the world talking about behaviorism. Behaviorism dictates that the behavior of an organism is a function of selection (evolution & learning mechanisms like operand conditioning) and the current stimulus - nothing more. Most people and psychologists without really questioning it believe in concepts like "the mind", "free will", "choice", "consciousness", etc. These concepts are all faulty.

Everything we know about people's "mind" is derived from observing their behavior. Using the concepts mentioned above seemingly provides a shortcut to explaining the behavior of animals (like us humans). But the problem is: None of these terms has ever been defined in a non circular manner. And none ever will be. (Wittgenstein provides a strictly logical explanation for this.)
Whenever you explain this to anybody they (even 99% of psychologists) say: "You're so shallow", because they have an "unflagging appeal to mystery" and don't see how these are "abstract" concepts. Moreover, even though you can "predict what I'll say" it's still no problem judging people (see Skinner's works, or "Understanding Behaviorism" by William Baum for an explanation). I don't quite get the Skinner line, though.

What Brad says about Greg's contact to E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins fits well into this account: Wilson is a behaviorist as well (see "E.O. Wilson and B.F. Skinner - A Dialogue between Sociobiology and Behaviorism". I don't know about Dawkins in specific, but his views fit well into behaviorism, too, as far as I see. Moreover, behaviorism is materialistic, so that 's further support to the thesis.

I believe that this song has little to do with supernatural religion per se, nor our modern global society, but that the central theme of this song is in fact Darwinian evolutionary theory and its rejection of free-will. Orthodox Neo-Darwinian theory essentially precludes the notion of free-will in any living organism (and also casts doubt on the existence of altruism) and this has tremendous philosophical and ethical repercussions for our steadily growing understanding of our own species.

In "The Surface Of Me" Greg says "I can say I'll behave freely all the time (but) you can predict what I'll say, it's in my DNA"
As an evolutionary biologist one of the doctrines that Greg adheres to is the relatively new science of sociobiology, which has shown that most human behavior can be traced back primarily to our genes inherent need to replicate, although environment is also an important factor. During press interviews Greg has repeatedly cited two of its leading proponents in E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins as huge influences on his own educational pursuits and subsequent world-view. Richard Dawkins is the author of the infamous book "The Selfish Gene" in which he demonstrates scientifically that no living thing (humans included) possess free-will.

Ultimately, everything we say, think and do is the product of our genetic makeup; anatomy is destiny and it's completely out of our control. "We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA? it is every living object's sole purpose for living?" Dr. Richard Dawkins Apologies to Skinner. He also makes reference to behavioral psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner who published a book called "Beyond Freedom And Dignity" in which he advanced the thesis that obsolete social concepts like free-will and dignity stood in the way of human happiness and productivity. Skinner believed free-will doesn't and cannot exist, and that we're all merely loci of our environment and genetic makeup. Dignity is the practice of giving individuals credit for their actions; to give someone credit for their actions is to imply that they are an originating force. Skinner believed that people are not originating entities and that we have no choice in the way we think and behave because our genetic and environmental condition allowed and made/forced us to think and behave in this way or that.

Paradoxically, Greg seems to support Skinners views on free-will while rejecting his disdain for pride and dignity ('cause he feels like he's a winner).

"So say a little prayer, convince yourself that someone cares, all I am is what you see there is nothing more than the surface of me": this is the only line in this song that attacks the false comfort offered by religion. Greg's saying that there's no hidden mystery, what you see (on the surface) is what you get. Greg is a materialist in the sense that he only believes in the material world; he doesn't accept the notion of a metaphysical afterlife, there is no heaven or hell, there is only the physical world you see before you & can hold in your corporeal hand.

I believe this song is both about society and religion. "You talk about abstraction at the top of the list, but you mine as well get pissed, 'cause in me the essence does not exist": this is a reference to all Jude-Christianity cites the intangible and metaphysical as the basis of their creed. The author is saying that within himself, he doesn't feel as though he has the capacity to find that. The rest of the song goes on to rail about how superficial, unbending, and fake society is.