5 Ways That Zeus Raped His Way To Glory

History is filthy. And when I say filthy, I don't mean bootleg porno filthy. I'm talking full-scale filthy - somewhere between a live donkey show and a snuff film. In tribute to the sexual sins of our fathers and erstwhile gods, here are the five most innovative ways that Zeus ever used a fantastic disguise for the purposes of stranger rape.

5. The chick.

The victim: Callisto.

The ruse: The virginal Callisto was a follower of the goddess Artemis, so it was a simple enough matter for Zeus disguise himself as Artemis in order to lure Callisto into the woods and rape her.

The progeny: Arcas, king of Arcadia.

Oh, and... When Artemis found out that her supposedly virgin follower was pregnant, she turned Callisto into a bear and set her loose in the forest, where she gave birth (as a fucking BEAR) to Arcas. In the conventional wisdom of the Gods of the day, Zeus hid baby Arcas away and never bothered to tell him who his mother was. Again, typical of these motherfucking stories, Arcas goes hunting one day and actually shoots his bear-mother dead.

4. The long-lost husband.

The victim: Alcmene.

The ruse: At first, Zeus actually had the balls to approach the married Alcmene in person - and she actually had the balls to refuse him - but that's ok, cause Zeus had a Plan B. Alcmene's husband (and cousin) was away at war, and all Zeus had to do was to stage a passionate reunion, starring himself as Ron Jeremy's stand-in.

The progeny: Heracles (Hercules) - the greatest condom-full-of-walnuts in history.

Oh, and... We forgot to mention that Zeus just pulled out his time-turner and turned the night he was with Alcmene into three entire days. If Alcmene thought the Gods couldn't screw her any more than that, then check this out:

- Her husband swore against ever having sex with her again, out of respect to Zeus, who is clearly the Most Persuasive Rapist Of All Time.

- Zeus' wife Hera was so jealous that she sent a bitch goddess to intervene and stop Heracles from being born. Alcmene was in labour for seven entire days before finally tricking the Gods into leaving her the fuck alone.

Again, it just sucks to be a woman in Ancient Greece.

3. The bull (or was it an eagle)?

The victim: Europa

The ruse: There are two equally screwed up version of this story. According to Robert Graves, Zeus became enamoured of Europa, "became an eagle and ravished (her) in a willow-thicket". Or, if you prefer Ovid's version, Zeus rocked up as a white bull, which she trusted enough to "mount its back" - and get carried off and raped. Perhaps the most frightening inherent aspect of these accounts is how any historical sources could have possibly confused an eagle with a fucking bull.

The progeny: Minos, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon, who all went on to become Kings.

Oh, and... Zeus named Europe after Europa in the world's most pathetic attempt at making up for getting raped by a bull.

2. The Swan.

The victim: Leda

The ruse: An oldie but a goodie - why not just try showing up and having sex with a defenceless woman at a waterhole - dressed as a giant swan? Good idea? Great idea.

The progeny: Helen - who later became Helen of Troy. Also the twins Castor and Polydeuces, who later became the sign Gemini.

Oh, and... Did we mention that the children hatched out of eggs?

1. The golden shower.

The victim: Danae.

The ruse: Danae's father Ascrisius lacked an heir, and loved consulting random hacks dressed up as Oracles. Naturally, one of them handed him the type of beautifully self-fulfilling prophecy that we've come to expect from Ancient Greece- namely, that his daughter would give birth to a son who would grow up to slaughter him. The most obvious available solution was to shut the virgin Danae in a tall tower only accessible from a trapdoor in the ceiling.

Zeus, being the classy fella that he is, decided he was tired of appearing as a giant bird and went to Plan B - which happened to be falling as a "shower of golden rain". Which, we assume, is just a euphemism for "pissed all over her".

The progeny: Perseus, who tamed Pegasus, defeated the Gorgon, saved a princess and managed to look hot in a tunic in modern film adaptations.

Oh, and... Proving that effective parenting comes naturally, Ascrisius cast Danae and the newborn Perseus into the sea in a sealed casket. Unfortunately for Ascrisius, they washed up onto another island, where Perseus was raised in blissful ignorance of his connection to his homeland. Sure enough, he returned as an adult to kill his asshole grandfather - proving yet again that consulting an Oracle is a fucking stupid thing to do.

Unintelligent Design

Last week, I found myself in the most amusing of discussions with a proponent of the so-called Theory of Intelligent Design. I've enjoyed arguing against this watered-down little brother of Biblical Creationism since I first came across it, and certainly jumped at the chance to do so with Grinning Devotee.


The conversation followed the normal gyrations - first, he put it to me that evolution was "just a theory", which didn't comprehensively account for the complexity of the human body - a creation so marvellous that it must warrant a designer. Ignoring the logical follow-up question ("who designed the designer?"), I argued that there was no real evidence against the theory of evolution, other than the spurious claim that anything complex must have been consciously created or designed rather than having painstakingly evolved via natural selection. Finally, he turned the accusation around. "What evidence is there, looking at the extraordinary complexity of the human body, that it wasn't designed by a higher intelligence?", he challenged.

And this is where it got fun. The human body is a veritable laundry list of unintelligent features, just a few of which are provided below for your consideration.

Appendixes: First on the list would have to be an organ which, despite serving no discernible function, can explode, flood our bodies with poison, and kill us in a matter of days. Intelligent Design disciples have consistently had difficulty providing any explanation for the inclusion of this vestigial organ in an intelligently-designed human body.

Hemorrhoids: Yes, hemorrhoids. Apart from being painful, the humble hemorrhoid is renowned for occurring exclusively in humans. As the only truly bipedal mammals, humans have evolved in one distinctly unintelligent way. Think about it - can you name another mammal whose anus is directly below its centre of gravity?

Semen Allergy: Referred to in medical circles as Human Seminal Plasma Hypersensitivity, this condition causes around 5% of women to have an allergic reaction to proteins in their partner's semen. The reaction can involve anything from redness and itching, to hives, blisters, and even anaphylactic shock. It's hard to think of a less intelligent factor to include in human reproduction.

Maternal Mortality: On the note of women's health, the WHO estimates that the lifetime risk of death caused by pregnancy and childbirth is a whopping 1 in 16 for women who don't have access to modern medical techniques such as Caesarean sections and blood transfusions. This rate is a great deal higher in humans than in other mammals. It's easy to see why. Our brains and heads have evolved rapidly to become much larger than the heads of any other ape, whilst our pelvises are disproportionately small.

Wisdom Teeth: This item should come as no surprise to anyone who's visited their dentist for the painfully expensive, and just plain painful experience of having these yanked out of your head. These teeth are thought to be vestigial remnants of a larger human jaw, containing more teeth for crushing and chewing plant matter, but now they essentially serve the function of creating wealth in the dental industry, and providing mortifying pain and infection to a large proportion of human adults. Archaeologists examining mass graves from the middle ages have surmised that the majority of (non-accidental) adolescent deaths from the period were probably caused by major impaction of the third molars. In terms of the debate at hand, it seems ironic that they're called wisdom teeth.

The Human Spine: In the course of their lives, up to 90% of adults will experience back pain. For many, the pain will be severe, and debilitating enough to cause significant problems with mobility, work, leisure and sleep. As far back as 1951, the late-great anthropologist and anatomist W.M. Krogman argued that the high incidence of vertebral problems in humans, which is not observed in other animals, can be attributed to the failure of the human spine to adequately adapt to walking upright. As he noted in Scientific American "the result is some ingenious adaptations, not all of them successful".

and finally...

Cancer: It's hard to argue that there's anything intelligent about cells which can be genetically programmed to turn into fatal tumours.

Grinning Devotee was amused, but unconvinced by the evidence of poor planning entailed in the human body. He said;

"You can't get pissed at God for everything that can go wrong with a good design."

"On the plus side", I said, "if you believe in evolution, then you don't need to get pissed with God at all."

"Ah," said Grinning Devotee. "Now you're just trying to be clever."

How intelligent is Intelligent Design?

Curly Questions 2: Hell and Morality

"Eternity."

It's not just a word that some guy scrawled in chalk on Sydney landmarks. It's a word that, in fact, defies human logic altogether. Trying to think about the longest amount of time possible still doesn't approach it. Billions of years, aeons, space-time - they all dwindle away to nothingness against the concept of eternity.

So now let's consider another concept: An eternity of torture. It's impossible to imagine, but this is exactly what a number of major religions specify as the punishment for earthly transgressions. An. Eternity. Of. Torture.

This concept was thrown into sharp relief for me recently, upon watching Sam Raimi's latest offering, Drag Me To Hell (superb - go see it!). The plot goes something like this: Christine Brown, an essentially nice young woman, covets a promotion at the bank she works at, but is told that she may miss out due to her inability to make "tough decisions". A old, sick, Gypsy woman, Mrs Ganush, shows up the same day and begs for an extension on her mortgage repayments. Christine could help her, but instead chooses to do the wrong thing, foreclosing on the mortgage to prove she can make a tough decision. Mrs Ganush begs, but Christine shames her, so Mrs Ganush places a Gypsy curse on Christine in which she will be tormented for a mere three days by a goat-legged demon before being dragged to Hell for an eternity of suffering. It's a rollicking good story with not a bad twist at the end, but left me feeling overwhelmingly depressed - not to mention confused about the interesting convolutions of moral reasoning that a belief in Hell requires.

Firstly, I find it impossible to accept that any crime, no matter how awful, could merit an eternity of torture. Even the most incredibly enormous crime is finite, and therefore the punishment should also be finite, whether or not it was to involve elements of extreme cruelty or torture, as would exist in Hell.

However, this is by no means the biggest problem. Even if were to accept that particular crimes were so severe as to warrant an eternity of torture, we're left with the issue of what this says about God. (I'm working under the premise that, if Hell existed, then so would Heaven and/or a God). In the context of Drag Me To Hell, we are left with the disturbing consideration that Christine's (admittedly dreadful) act of foreclosing on Mrs Ganush's mortgage warrants an eternity of torture, but somehow Mrs Ganush's ultimate act of bloody vengeance (sending Christine to Hell for eternity) does not attract the same penalty - it is implied that Mrs Ganush's soul is free and clear, so to speak. So, those who sin in a finite way, on Earth, may face horrible torture for eternity, but those who condemn others to such torture are let off scot-free. God doesn't intervene to save Christine, or apparently to punish Mrs Ganush, which leaves us with the most disturbing of possibilities.

1 - That God isn't capable of intervention: i.e. a soul in Hell (or about to be dragged there) is "out of His hands" - meaning that he is not in fact omnipotent.

2- (and more probable, considering the tone of the Old Testament) That God is the biggest bastard of them all, the cruellest tyrant, the most bloodthirsty and retributive of dictators. Except, instead of condemning His enemies to death against the wall, He condemns them to torture, without reprieve or hope of reprieve, for all of eternity.

Surely, God's moral compass would have to be a bit out of whack to allow this state of affairs. The only remaining possibility is that He would have to condemn Himself to Hell, in retribution for all the suffering He caused by sending people to Hell in the first place.

Your thoughts? Do any actions merit Hell?

Curly questions 1: Heaven and Morality

A particular type of religious person will always wish to believe that they have a monopoly on morality. I referred to a couple of these types last month in Jim and the Indians - you know, the type who use religion as an excuse to stop thinking. You've seen these people - they're often the ones wearing a beatific smile and vacant gaze, usually in conjunction with either a WWJD? bracelet, or a t-shirt emblazoned; "Ask me how to be saved!" They have all the answers to everything. Just ask them.

One thing that they will tell you without hesitation is that they cannot conceive of any reason that non-believers (such as myself) should feel the need to act morally. An old friend of mine, "Rebecca" was a prime example. "Why," she said, "would you worry about being a good person if it's all chaos out there? If you're not trying to get into Heaven, or to avoid Hell, then what reason have you got to be a good person? You can do anything you want, and nothing will happen after you're dead." Rebecca's chubby jowls wobbled as she shook her head obstinately. "If it wasn't for God, why would people bother to lead good lives?"

I didn't break it to Rebecca that she had just identified herself as both a moral and an intellectual weakling. What Rebecca still doesn't know, is that morality comes about in stages, and that she's stuck on the very bottom rungs.

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) was an American psychologist who theorised that there are six stages (which can be divided into 3 levels) of moral development. In level 1 (pre-conventional), people orient their behaviour in such as way as to avoid punishment (stage 1) and then to reap rewards (stage 2). These two stages are known as Pre-conventional morality. In level 2, people come to an understanding of rules as social norms which allow them to fit in (3) and then as important in terms of preserving authory, law and order (4). Stages 4 and 5 can be termed as Conventional morality. Finally, an individual surmounts these orientations by first recognising the importance of social contracts of behaviour (5) and finally, universal ethical principles which can be applied for the greatest good (6). These are known as Post-conventional morality.

Worryingly, although all children start at Pre-conventional levels, only a minority of individuals reach Post-conventional morality. My friend Rebecca certainly didn't. Her argument (which, to give her the benefit of the doubt, she probably learned at Sunday School rather than formulating for herself) only served to show that she had no fundamental understanding of what morality is. Allowing fear of punishment and hope of reward to shape behaviour has nothing to do with morality at all - it's pure self interest along the lines of the carrot and stick approach. And, frankly, you can teach a rat to behave that way.

Poor Rebecca. She was not only stuck in pre-conventional moral development, she assumed everyone else is, too. She found it impossible to believe that I, as an unbeliever, would wish to behave morally, as there was no overt incentive to do so, or disincentive for running psychopathically amok. Far from religion being conducive to morality in this case, it actually stunted Rebecca's moral development by leading her to believe that the reason for being good is going to Heaven. Amen. Have a carrot.

I like to think that most religious people out there are smarter than Rebecca, and do good for its own sake rather than merely to moderate the consequences. Putting God into the equation doesn't have to cancel out morality in its true sense, but it can frighteningly distort the picture if the motives become mixed. In the end, how can you claim to be acting morally if the driving force behind your behaviour is self-interest?

Do you think religion is conducive to morality?