Self
Explanation
The Joke
A woman prays to God: "Dear God, why don't you give us a unified consciousness? All we've got is this mass of constantly fighting brain modules!" God responds: "Man, you're describing a nightmare. Can you imagine how horrible death would be if you had anything worth losing?" The woman says "Don't just say it's a soul, is it a soul?" God replies: "A soul? No."
God then explains: "The ineffable, indescribable quality of human consciousness, untouched by time, space, and even death..." The woman responds: "I... I guess?" God continues: "I created you with no self and you invented a self to feel bad about." The woman's response: "God, are you..." and God finishes with: "I was laughing so hard some manna got caught in my throat."
The Humor
The comic takes on deep questions about consciousness, the self, and the soul, but delivers the answers through a God who is essentially trolling humanity. The central joke is the inversion of the usual complaint about consciousness -- humans complain about not having a unified self, but God points out that having a fragmented consciousness is actually a mercy, because a truly unified self would make death unbearable. The additional twist is God's revelation that humans don't actually have a "self" at all -- they invented one and then made themselves miserable about it. God finds this so amusing he's literally choking with laughter. The comic combines theological humor with neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy about the illusion of self.
References
The comic references several major ideas: the modular theory of mind from cognitive science (the brain as competing modules rather than a unified consciousness), Buddhist concepts of "anatta" (no-self), philosophical debates about the hard problem of consciousness, and the theological concept of the soul. The "manna" reference is biblical, referring to the food God provided to the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 16). The comic also touches on Daniel Dennett's work on consciousness as a constructed narrative rather than a unified entity.