Mars

Here's a little fella that's been in the news a lot lately....

Must have been a pretty cool god to get a planet named after you.


And a month.

Heck....two Roman Emperors that lived just before Jesus's time have months named after them....which is one more than Jesus has. 

Roman god of war and somewhat analogous to the Greek god Ares, Mars was generally thought of more positively than Ares.  Perhaps the Romans were a bit better at war than the Greeks, thus colouring their opinion of the related god?  (not being a historian of ancient greece or rome I'm just throwing that out there).

He was also a god of agriculture, owing to his godly virility.  Virile god = healthy plants.  It just makes sense.

In one of the more well-known Roman myths, he was the father of Romulus and Remus, who after being left out to die by their uncle were nursed by a wolf, fed by a woodpecker (Mars' sacred animals) and carried to safety on the river before being raised to adulthood by a lowly shepherd. 

After some adventuring involving a regicide, they decided to found a city.  Romulus won out on the location and killed his brother so he got naming rights.  And Rome was founded.  No big deal.  Just a crappy little town in the middle of a boot.  Probably never amount to anything.

Priapus

Zeus (Jupiter)

By Jove! Now we're talking!

Zeus (or Jupiter as the romans, who though he was so awesome they kidnapped him and made him their own king of the gods, called him).....king of the gods, god of the sky.  Weilder of thunder and lightning.  So awesome they named Thursday after him (in the romantic languages at least), oh...and this little tiny planet we'll call Jupiter.

Son of Cronus and Rhea he was hidden from his father until he was an adult to avoid the fate of being eaten like his siblings.  Then when he came of age, he confronted Cronus and cut his belly open and freed his brother and sisters.

Then with the help of his siblings and a bunch of other awesome creatures (giants, cyclops-es) he defeated the Titans in battle and became the king of the gods.

Then he shacked up with his sister Hera and started to breed the heck out of her (fathering Ares, Hebe, Hephaestus) and anything else that moved (also Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses).  So yeah .. a bunch of gods and most of the heroes that you'd want to know.

Take that God and jesus....


Mostly noble, besides his screwing around, he tended to stay out of the day-to-day scheming that most of the other gods were involved in.  

He could be a bit of a jerk sometimes though - was pretty big on the eternal torture thing - Promethius for giving men fire, Atlas for fighting against him in the battle with the Titans, etc.  Also could transform folks into animals when he wanted, eagles if they were good and just, and tortoises if they skipped his wedding.  



And did I mention....Thunderbolts!!!!

***For the most part I will use the Greek and Roman gods interchangeably unless there is some major important difference between their stories or legacies.

God/Yahweh/Jehovah/The Lord/Jesus/Allah

Well, If we're going to profile all the gods that are cooler than God, we probably should start with God

Just counting the 3 major Abrahamic religions that follow the guy (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) he's got more than 3 billion followers, roughly 1/2 of the world's population.

The most hilarious part about this large following...... if you told the average Arkansas (pronounced Arrrrrr-Kansas) Christian that he worshiped the same god as those heathen devil-worshiping moslems....his head would probably explode like a plane hitting a sky-scraper. (too soon? yeah...probably)   And if you told him that those thieving, dishonest money hungry jews also worshiped the same god but don't believe he had a son that was also God....but wasn't god, but was, but wasn't, but really was, but kinda wasn't, but...it's complicated....... he'd swear off bagels for good.  But....it is what it is....

Kinda like how god answered Moses when he asked for his name - "I am that I am" he said before eating a can of spinach and knocking out Bluto who was trying to kidnap Olive Oil again.....

Supposedly created everything in just six days including man, woman, the animals, plants etc about 6000 years ago.  Which doesn't really line up with any legitimate timelines of the world.... by a couple billion years.... No matter...he later destroys it all in a giant flood because of man's wickedness.  Besides killing everyone and everything except for one boatload of refugees it really didn't do anything since the world was just as wicked pretty much immediately after.  Oh...and that's why we have rainbows...cause that's the sign of his promise never to flood the world again.  What a sweet fella.   Oh and despite flooding and killing everyone and everything...apparently nobody told the Egyptians who just kept on making their pyramids and inbreeding the heck out of their ruling class without any mention of it.  (to compensate for this apparent contradiction between the bible and reality, biblical "historians" stack the egyptian dynasties on top of each other so that they can all fit into the post-flood time period....)

He claims to be the only god, while at the same time threatening that people had better not worship any other gods....(but...if there aren't any other gods, how could they worship them....unless maybe there are other gods.  Cooler gods?)

He's a bit of a loose cannon....despite commanding his followers not to kill, he does a lot of killing himself and makes frequent exceptions when it's okay for his people to lay down the smack. The writer at this site Drunk With Blood has done a fairly good job summarizing god's body count....confirmed kills ~2.5million and estimated total kills ~25million.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror. - Richard Dawkins

Later on he has a son through some complicated womb time-share scheme,  and that's when things start to get really messed up.   See, the christians have to reconcile the one-and-only god thing with the fact that they're worshiping his son ....so this whole bewildering trinity thing got made up so they wouldn't have to smite themselves for being polytheists. And this jesus fellow was all about the peace and love and stuff so most christians just forget that whole big mean killing machine old testament thing ever happened....except the "god hates fags" parts...those are still important. 


The only really amazing thing about this god is how many followers he still has.  Archaeologists and historians have disproved the historical accuracy of much of the bible and scientists (geologists, biologists, astrophysicists) have done in with most of the rest.  But at least we still can use the Bible for moral guidance.....Hahaha.  Ha!  Even god's followers know better than that.  They just cherry-pick the parts that they like, and ignore the rest.

Which is how we've ended up with this complicated mess of Jews, Catholics, Protestants (about 100 different types), Moslems, and Mormans.....

Think of it like a movie. The Torah is the first one, and the New Testament the sequel. Then the Qu’ran comes out, and it retcons the last one like it never happened. There’s still Jesus, but he’s not the main character anymore, and the messiah hasn’t shown up yet.
Jews like the first movie but ignored the sequels. Christians think you need to watch the first two, but the third movie doesn’t count. The Moslems think the third one was the best, and Mormons liked the second one so much, they started writing fanfiction that doesn’t fit with ANY of the series canon.

And speaking of moslems...they take this stuff waaaaaaaaay too seriously.  Google image search "god"....you get a pile of pics... including the wonderful monty python representation above.... try jesus....you get a bunch...including that hilariously smug pointy one..... now try Allah.... you get a squiggle (the Arabic word for allah...) even though it's really the same guy as up there....and don't even try for Muhammad....just typing that into an image search will send your address to an islamic death squad. 

So yeah....enough about this guy.  On to some cool gods.