the-denial-of-butts
Explanation
The Joke
A woman is praying to God, asking why he made humans. God responds that he had already made several other beings -- beings who could read minds, beings who could move faster than light, and others with extraordinary powers -- but they were all failures because they lacked "the sublime and beautiful." The woman asks what a butt has to do with being a clue to the sublime, and God explains that this is not just any design element -- it is God's final and greatest creation. He reveals that in this universe, things evolve butts: corn dogs evolve them, non-butt beings grow butts after you attach a butt to them, and everything aspires to butthood.
The final panel has the woman asking if she can go back to being pushed on swings, suggesting this is a child asking God existential questions, and God has given her a completely absurd and butt-centric theology in response.
The Humor
The humor operates on the absurdist premise that the entire purpose of creation -- the grand cosmic design -- centers on butts. This takes the classic theological question ("Why did God create humanity?") and gives it the most undignified possible answer. The escalation is key to the comedy: God starts with a seemingly profound setup about the failures of previous creations and the search for beauty, building expectations for a deep revelation, and then the answer is just... butts. The child's discomfort in the final panel adds another layer, as this is clearly not the wholesome Sunday-school answer she was hoping for. The title "The Denial of Butts" plays on philosophical concepts like "the denial of death" (Ernest Becker), replacing existential gravitas with anatomical silliness.
References
The comic parodies theological arguments about intelligent design and the purpose of creation. The title is likely a play on Ernest Becker's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Denial of Death" (1973), which argues that much of human behavior is motivated by an unconscious fear of mortality. Here, mortality is replaced with butts, which is a significant downgrade in philosophical seriousness.