2014-10-06
Explanation
The Joke
A child asks his mother, "Mom, do dogs have an afterlife?" The mother gently replies, "I'm sorry sweetie, they don't." The child then reasons: "Dogs don't have souls, so there isn't anything that lives on after the body dies." In the next panel, labeled "Later," the mother is sitting on the couch and the child walks in saying, "I guess it's okay if you cheat on your wife, soulless." The family dog follows behind, apparently saying (or thinking) "I told you so!"
The joke is that the child took the mother's explanation about dogs not having an afterlife and extended the logic: if dogs lack souls, and the mother (being a biological creature like a dog) presumably also lacks a soul, then she too has no afterlife and no spiritual accountability -- making infidelity consequence-free. The child essentially uses the mother's own theological reasoning against her.
The Humor
The humor works through the child's ruthless application of logical consistency to a comforting religious framework. The mother casually denies dogs an afterlife without realizing she is opening a philosophical can of worms about what makes humans special. The child, with childlike directness, follows the reasoning to its uncomfortable conclusion: if the criterion for having an afterlife is having a soul, and dogs don't have one, what exactly makes humans different? The dog's "I told you so" in the final panel adds an extra comedic layer, as if the dog knew all along this line of reasoning would backfire. The comic also plays on the common philosophical problem of drawing a clear line between human and animal consciousness.