Er did you want the $5 argument or the full 1/2 hour?

Pray tell what the Heck is a Uktena

Lovely story have to remember that one

ow and btw   i wouldn't mind if you belived in satan or whatever. truthfully i don't really care. just don't tell me to convert to your religion and well get along just fine

Lol, eskimoes.  Me, I don't believe in Seattle.

  Quote:
I'm sure it is possible to have faith and happiness.  However, I prefer to know the truth of things, and adjust my lifestyle accordingly, than just blindly push on, fighting my way through life with crusading zeal.  I am, however, really quite happy.  Genuinely.  I can verify this with absolute certainty, although no one can verify me.  It just riles me that I have been talking about Bush-bashing, Kyoto-loving, environmentally friendly modes of existence for a long time, with a nice scientific basis, and then you just come waltzing in with your faith and say exactly the same things I've been saying!  You can see where I might feel my turf has been nicked.  But whatever, you want Bush to crash and burn, fine.  Take my turf if you want it.
 In any case, I personally see evolution as a rusty old ship, but one that keeps getting repainted and designed, and so never has any real holes.  Water can keep smashing at the sides, but however much gets on top of the ship, the damn thing won't sink - too many watertight bulkheads, you see?
 A scientific conversion is never Damascene.  It gradually erodes you, rather than engulfing you with a single big wave; and that is it's strength.
 I don't have a real problem with religion - I truly find it fascinating.  I simply think that with religions, you can keep going through them and seeing the same people doing the same things all over the world, thinking they are right, when they all completely different.  Shinto, for instance - a nature loving religion, with a very "primitive" animist style.  It's adherents think it is absolutely correct.  Why are they any more likely to be correct than the followers of Mohammed?  Why are the Hebrews any more likely to be right than the believers in the Iroquois Creation Myth of the Turtle?  We can, of course, never know who is truly right, but to be honest, I don't mind.  I rather like being a runty little fire-brand, trying to turn the minds of all the religious - sorry if I do really offend people, but I rather think Techstuf likes arguing (as I, of course, do).
 So, to commence riling people once more...
There are 3 kinds of organisms in the Universe: atheists, organisms that can't understand the science, and Chuck Norris.
 Nah, I'm kidding.  Everyone have a nice Easter.  I probably will be offline for the next few weeks.

Very impressive! Actually I was expecting English to let everybody know what the Uktena is. In any case it is not a god, just a powerful being along the same lines as Fenris the wolf or the Banshee. 8)  The crystal by the way, is supposed to be fed fresh blood every 7 days or it loses its power. The future can be seen by looking into it and there are other smaller crystal used for divining that are supposed to be the Uktenas scales.