god-computer
Explanation
The Joke
The comic depicts humanity encountering a God-like computer (or God communicating through a computer terminal) that makes a series of increasingly demanding and paradoxical requests. God's computer announces various commandments to a crowd of people: first telling them that "Miracles happened to be in 14-point" font, then announcing that various "algebraic varieties" are to be commanded. The crowd reacts with awe and confusion. God's pronouncements escalate in absurdity, mixing theological language with bureaucratic and computational jargon.
Throughout the comic, God (via the computer) issues declarations that sound profound but become increasingly nonsensical or trivially administrative. The crowd's reactions shift from reverence to bewilderment as the divine messages grow stranger. The final panels show the computer delivering an anticlimax, revealing that God's grand computational project is far less impressive or meaningful than the crowd had hoped.
The Humor
The comic satirizes the idea of receiving divine wisdom through technology. If God communicated via a computer, the messages might not be the profound spiritual revelations humanity hopes for -- they might instead resemble the banal, confusing, or frustrating outputs we already get from computers. The juxtaposition of religious awe with mundane computing frustrations (formatting issues, cryptic error messages, unhelpful instructions) creates a comedy of deflated expectations. The crowd's shifting reactions -- from rapture to confusion to disappointment -- mirror the common human experience of expecting technology to deliver transformative answers and instead getting gibberish.
References
The comic plays on the concept of a deus ex machina (literally "god from the machine"), as well as science fiction scenarios like Douglas Adams' "Deep Thought" computer from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which computed the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything as simply "42." The idea that divine or cosmic truth might be disappointingly mundane when finally revealed is a recurring theme in both comedy and philosophy.