2012-04-24
Explanation
In this comic, a man prays to God asking the classic existential question: "God, what is the meaning of life?" God'''s answer is unexpected and absurd: "Cheese." When the man responds with confusion ("What?"), God elaborates with a surprisingly detailed and logical argument. To make a good cheese, you first need to evolve mold, then plants for herbs, then pigs for rennet and dairy cattle for milk. Then you need to evolve beings with brains big enough to domesticate all these things and bring the ingredients together over a long period of time. In other words, the entire arc of evolution and civilization was orchestrated just to produce cheese.
The man pushes back: "But what about art, science, philosophy, religion..." God dismisses these as mere "side benefits to the whole cheese thing." Devastated, the man concludes, "So my life has no point. I'''m just a cheese byproduct. I'''m whey." (This is a clever pun -- whey is literally a byproduct of cheese production, and the man is using it to describe his existential status.) God tries to respond but keeps getting distracted. The man asks, "Are you eating cheese while answering my prayer?" and God replies, "I'''m sorry, but this Stilton is to die for."
The joke works on multiple levels: it takes the grand question of existence and gives it the most mundane possible answer, it constructs a surprisingly coherent teleological argument for cheese as the purpose of creation, and it portrays God as being just as obsessed with cheese as anyone else would be if they had designed the universe to produce it. The votey panel shows a wheel of cheese with a speech bubble saying "So... beautiful..." -- God (or perhaps the comic itself) gazing adoringly at the culmination of all creation.