2014-11-13
Explanation
The Joke
A man recalls that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. He reasons that this means he can determine the distance to God simply by praying and waiting for a response. He kneels and prays: "Dear Lord, what is the meaning of life?" The final panel jumps forward to show a gravestone reading "Here lies Steve Jones. Died a minimum of 40 light years from his maker."
The Humor
The comic takes the physical constraint of the speed of light and applies it literally to the concept of prayer and divine communication. If God exists as a physical being somewhere in the universe and is bound by the same speed-of-light limitation on information transfer, then the time it takes to receive an answer to a prayer would reveal God's minimum distance. The punchline is that Steve died without ever receiving a response, meaning God must be at least 40 light years away (since Steve presumably lived about 40 more years after praying). The joke works on multiple levels: it is a wry commentary on unanswered prayers, a playful application of physics to theology, and a dark joke about a man who wasted his remaining years waiting for an answer that never came.
References
- The speed of light (approximately 299,792,458 meters per second) is the maximum speed at which information can travel in the universe, according to Einstein's theory of special relativity.
- A light year is the distance light travels in one year, about 9.46 trillion kilometers.