2010-08-30
Explanation
This comic makes a joke connecting creationism with pornography. A man is caught by a woman (presumably his wife or partner) looking at something on his computer that appears to involve nudity. He frantically tries to explain: "It's not porn! It's creation science!" Below the panel, the caption reads: "Think about it. The creationist 'Descent of Man' is just a naked guy."
The humor hinges on a clever double meaning. In evolutionary biology, "The Descent of Man" is Charles Darwin's famous work tracing human evolution. In that context, the "descent" of man involves a long chain of gradually changing species depicted in scientific illustrations. But if you reject evolution and take the creationist view, humans did not descend from earlier species -- Adam was simply created fully formed by God. And since Adam was created without clothes (he was naked in the Garden of Eden), the creationist version of the "Descent of Man" would literally just be a picture of a naked man. The man at the computer is exploiting this theological loophole to justify looking at nudity as religious study.
The votey panel reinforces the joke by showing a simple illustration of a naked stick figure walking, labeled "DESCENT OF MAN" -- depicting the creationist version as literally just a nude guy walking around, in contrast to the famous evolutionary "March of Progress" illustration showing a sequence of increasingly upright hominids.