It's very revealing that all the more fantastic elements of the story got considerably less fantastic the nearer they got to actual history. God's powers, the miracles, the ages of the patriarchs; once real people started to record and investigate this stuff, all the magic faded away. It's almost as though it were all mythology.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
