2010-10-08
Explanation
This comic shows a boy kneeling at his bedside in prayer, asking "God... why is there suffering in the world?" God actually answers, explaining: "Day one of making the universe... I forgot a minus sign. It all sorta... trickles down from there... Good luck!" Below the panel is a caption that reads: "Fortunately, God doesn't answer prayers."
The joke operates on multiple levels. First, it tackles the age-old theological problem of evil (theodicy) -- why would a benevolent, omnipotent God allow suffering? -- and gives the most deflating possible answer: it was a typo. God didn't intend for suffering to exist; He simply made a mathematical error on the first day of creating the universe, and all the pain and misery in existence is just a cascading bug from a forgotten minus sign. This is both a parody of how programmers and scientists know that a single sign error can produce catastrophically wrong results, and a darkly funny trivialization of all human suffering.
The caption "Fortunately, God doesn't answer prayers" adds another twist: the comic suggests it would actually be worse to know the truth (that all suffering is meaningless and accidental) than to simply receive no answer at all. Ignorance, in this case, really is bliss. The votey continues the theme with the boy asking "Why is there death?" and God answering "Forgot an exponent" -- suggesting the universe is riddled with mathematical typos, each one responsible for a different category of existential horror.