Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A person complains to God about the conservation of energy, asking why we cannot create or destroy energy and get something for nothing. God responds: "You mean like how we ban people from arranging things like pendulums, love, and convergent conversations?" The human is confused, so God clarifies: "Because those things make you happy for nothing." The human considers this and says, "So we already have perpetual motion machines -- magnets and stuff that make you feel..." and then God finishes: "We have to kill all the physicists."

The twist is that once the human starts to realize that happiness from simple things could be considered "free energy," God panics -- because if physicists catch on to this loophole in thermodynamics, it would undermine the laws of physics. The absurd conclusion is that God must eliminate the physicists to protect the secret.

The Humor

The comedy operates by blending real physics (the conservation of energy, perpetual motion impossibility) with a theological/philosophical argument about the "free" nature of human happiness. The punchline subverts expectations: instead of a warm, uplifting conclusion about how love and beauty are nature's perpetual motion machines, God reaches the paranoid conclusion that the physicists must be silenced. It satirizes both the rigidity of physical law and the idea that God is essentially running a con that could be exposed by scientists.