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darwinning

2025-05-14 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
darwinning
Votey panel for darwinning
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

The comic opens with someone accusing "Darwinists" of wanting to reduce humans to "just being a sex-obsessed ape with no higher purpose." The Darwinist character (a bald man swimming in the ocean) responds not by denying the premise but by flipping it into an argument for human greatness: if humans really are just sex-obsessed apes, then the fact that we built skyscrapers, particle colliders, and sailed the stars is even more impressive, not less. He compares it to "flying to Jupiter on a unicycle."

The humor hinges on a clever rhetorical jiu-jitsu. The standard anti-evolution talking point is that Darwinism is demeaning because it strips humanity of divine purpose. But the comic argues the opposite: if you believe God was guiding everything, then human achievements are actually less impressive (we needed the Creator of reality just to light a match). Meanwhile, if you believe we're just "pointless slime that oozed out of the Darwinian slurry," then every accomplishment is a staggering triumph against the odds. The more debased our origins, the more glorious the achievements.

The punchline lands when the red-haired accuser, fully converted by this argument, asks to join, and the Darwinist blesses him with "May Darwin smile upon the fittest 10% of your offspring" -- a parody of religious benedictions rewritten in natural-selection terms, since in evolution only a fraction of offspring would be expected to thrive.

The title "darwinning" is a portmanteau of "Darwin" and "winning," capturing the triumphant tone of the Darwinist's argument.

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