2011-04-29
Explanation
This comic takes aim at the concept of intelligent design (or "guided evolution") by imagining God as a designer making contradictory specifications. Floating in the clouds, God announces his plan: "Okay, let's make humans. First, humans should be monogamous. Second, I'm going to shape the human phallus like a mushroom so the head extracts the semen of rivals." The caption below reads: "This is why I don't believe in guided evolution."
The humor is rooted in a real scientific hypothesis. Research by evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup has suggested that the shape of the human penis may have evolved as a "semen displacement device," designed to scoop out a rival male's semen during intercourse -- an adaptation that only makes sense in a species where females mate with multiple partners. The comic highlights the logical contradiction: if humans were intelligently designed to be monogamous, there would be no need for anatomy specifically adapted to sperm competition. The existence of such a feature is evidence of evolutionary pressures from non-monogamous mating, not intentional design.
The votey panel continues the joke with God adding another inexplicable design choice: "Also, there should be nipple hair." This piles on another example of a seemingly pointless or poorly considered anatomical feature that is hard to explain as the product of intelligent planning but makes perfect sense as an artifact of evolution's indifferent, unguided processes.