How ICP is like XKCD

Like you all, I got a good chuckle out of the Insane Clown Posse’s “Do You Believe in Miracles” video. And, like many of you, I interpreted it as fundamentally anti-science. Which, to be fair, wasn’t so much interpretation as a literal reading of lines like, “Fucking magnets, how do they work?/ And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist/ Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed.”

But I kind of had to look at the song in a new light after reading the Onion AV Club’s interview with Violent J.

… Some of these songs when we’re talking to this fan base that we’re in love with, that loves us, we’re hitting them with the entertainment and the fucking anger and the excitement. But other times we’re saying, “Hey man, I know everybody can get caught up in the mundane routine of life, but every once in a while, stop and look around and look at some of these amazing things that we’ve been given on this earth. Look at the stars at night and look at the mountains, look at the ocean. It’s some pretty cool shit here.”

And having kids, and seeing through their eyes everything for the first time–even a bug, a fucking ladybug, my kids gather around a ladybug and I realize how much there is in this world that’s cool for people. If there is no God and it’s all science, we could’ve been born living inside a rock, or as a worm, and all you do is travel underground. But we weren’t, we were given this playground, this awesome planet to explore. If you want to fucking climb a mountain, you can do that. If you want to scuba dive, travel the rainforest, or chop a rainforest down, you can do whatever the fuck you want to do on this earth.

God help me, but I think I identify with that profanity-filled philosophizing.

Now, Violent J is, obviously, coming at this from the perspective of somebody who believes in a deity. But the basic premise works even you do think science is all that there is. To summarize Violent J’s position: “Hey, it’s just chance. We could have been worms. Instead, we’re mutha-f’in primates with awesome brains and a world to explore! Don’t forget for a second how goddamn amazing that is! Now let’s get up in that shit!”

I might disagree with Violent J about the particulars, but as a person who loves science, I can’t really reject the spirit he’s channeling.

And there is, of course, another popular way to describe this same, basic, premise …