rain
Explanation
The Joke
A person standing in the rain is asked "Why does it rain?" They give a scientific answer: "Because God wants to give us something beautiful." Their companion pushes back: "So whenever God stops raining, there's drought?" The first person pivots: "No, when it stops raining, things are still growing -- it was considered good." The companion then asks: "Have you ever considered that it's just politics?" The first person replies: "I was thinking of science and politics."
The final panel is a promotional tag for the book "Soonish" by Zach and Kelly Weinersmith, encouraging readers to get signed copies from Barnes and Noble.
The Humor
The comic plays on the tension between scientific, religious, and political explanations for natural phenomena. The character keeps shifting between frameworks -- attributing rain to God, then to natural cycles, then to politics -- satirizing how people cherry-pick explanatory frameworks depending on convenience. The joke is that instead of committing to one coherent worldview, the character muddles all of them together, ultimately claiming to think about "science and politics" simultaneously, which is an honest but intellectually unsatisfying position. It pokes fun at the human tendency to blend incompatible explanatory systems rather than rigorously choosing one.
References
This was one of the promotional comics for "Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything" (2017) by Zach and Kelly Weinersmith.