2014-05-10
Explanation
The Joke
The comic's title panel reads "This is how I imagine heaven." It shows a man who has died and arrived in heaven as an angel. He says to God, "Sorry I didn't believe in you." God, depicted as a glowing orb or ball-like figure, responds, "Hey, sorry about balls."
The Humor
The joke imagines heaven as a place of mutual apology. The human apologizes for atheism, which is the standard expectation in afterlife scenarios. But the punchline subverts this by having God apologize back — specifically for "balls" (testicles), as though this was a known design flaw God feels genuinely sheepish about. The humor comes from the idea that God would be self-aware enough to acknowledge that certain aspects of human anatomy were poorly designed, and that the afterlife would involve this kind of casual, mutually embarrassed exchange. It also plays on the common comedic and philosophical observation that testicles, being extremely sensitive organs placed in an extremely vulnerable external location, seem like a questionable engineering choice.