Okay, when your evil brother asks you to lie in coffin. WHY DID YOU ACCEPT! Osiris is an idiot.

When a Oracle that is always right said your son will kill you. Don't abandon him, do the deed yourself.

Matt,

One of the few intelligent things Zeus did was make Achilles mother marry a mortal. Speaking of the whole Trojan thing, when the priest of Apollo comes to your army asking you to return some captives or Apollo will be mad, why do you say "no"? If you are rolling a giant statue of a horse into the city and somebody says, "Hmm, this may not be a good idea," right before a seamonster eats him do you disregard what they said?

Ok, those are mortals. Why did Zeus, who bedded everything in a skirt he could find, stay in an apparently unsatisfying relationship with Hera? Was that some sort of Olympian politics thing?

Actually it was a common Greek Practice to have have a wife for legimate heirs and to run the household, and a young man and a young women to fufil your sexual desires.

And for that matter, why do you roll a horse dedicated to a goddess that has been making war on you for 10 years.

Matt,

There may be "interesting" items in modern religions, but some ancient ones take the cake. Take Arachny (sp?) for instance. If I claimed I was the best cheese maker in the world and my cheese was better than anything the gods make and one showed up I would not stand by my boast. I definitely would not curdle a cheese that showed the folly of the gods.

Am I wrong in assuming the Greek gods were not as blatantly $tupid as Osiris?

Archine is without a doubt the stupidist "hero" ever.

Modern Religions: You have heard the Scientologist creation myth? I think we used it as a LICC plot. However, I really don't think mythlogy really fits neatly into religious doctrines. I don't really know how the orgins of spiders played into the everyday life of your average Greek.

Oh, and for stupidity Milton's Lucifer takes the cake. Presumably he didn't pay attention in Archangel class.

Osiris basically fell for the dumbest trick. His always evil brother tricked him to lay in a coffin. A COFFIN!!! The Reason? It was a prize, whoever fit it won it. He was sealed within, and that killed him.

And when your evil brother tells you, "... and if you do, you'll win this coffin!" why is that phrase alone not a "dead" giveaway? ;-)

And for dumb Greek mortals, let's not forget whatshisface who got turned into a deer. When you come across a naked goddess who happens to be (A)your patron and (B)the goddess of hunting and killing things, you do not stand there whistling and making crude remarks! If there ever was a situation where, "I'm sorry! I saw nothing! I will turn around and leave now!" was called for, I'd say this is it!

And probably on the same level as Arachne, I nominate Niobe, good old Niobe who made it a point of honor to rub it in Leto's face that she only had two children while Mrs. N had nine. ("Your two kids, you know, the male and female gods of archery and killing sports, those kids? They're infinitely inferior to mine, and I dare them to come down and hear it from me!")

An honorable mention goes to archangel Shemhazai, who worried that his follower-hungry prospective father-in-law would not like him if it was revealed that instead of being a very powerful sorcerer, he was actually an even more powerful archangel.

In the gospel of Thomas, the boy Jesus starts "zapping" people. Gnostics.