Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

his-plan

2018-04-27 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
his-plan
Votey panel for his-plan
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 Joke

The comic shows two people having a conversation about the perceived conflict between religion and evolution. One person says: "I don't think there's a conflict. I believe natural selection was the method He used to put a psychotic omnivorous ape in charge of the whole planet." The caption below reads: "I wonder if Satanists believe in guided evolution."

The speaker is presenting what sounds like a reconciliation of religious faith and evolutionary science -- the common "theistic evolution" position that God used natural selection as His tool. But the punchline is in how the speaker describes the end result: instead of saying God guided evolution to create humanity in His image, they describe humans as "a psychotic omnivorous ape" that has been given dominion over Earth. This is not a flattering theological picture.

The Humor

The humor works by starting with what seems like a standard moderate religious position -- God works through evolution -- and then subverting it by describing the outcome of that divine plan in the most unflattering terms possible. If God deliberately used evolution to produce humans, and humans are essentially violent, unstable primates, then what does that say about God's plan? The caption deepens the joke by suggesting that maybe this view of guided evolution -- where the goal was to produce a dangerous apex predator -- sounds more like something a Satanist would believe than a traditional theist.

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