No probs. Keep it real!

Good advice. (I'd take it but I don't go to church and I'm not religious. See, I'm the "friend". I just wanted to have a philosophical talk without having any atheist v. theist conflict to get in the way). But the next pastor I see who understand chaos theory I'll definitely ask! Always interesting...thanks a lot for the discussion!

OK I asked him about some of the stuff and he actually had a good answer (about entropy). He said that yes, that is the general law, but there's nothing keeping order from arising from chaos as long as the OVERALL entropy is increasing. So you keep your body alive and ordered by eating (disordering) say a piece of brocolli, so the overall entropy still increases. He said it was like a snowflake. Each one is incredibly complex and beautiful yet it arises from pure chaos of little bits of water freezing to each other. So life could have happened a bit like a snowflake (random stuff comes together to randomly form a cohesive pattern). I looked it up and it looks like it's empirically valid too (chaos theory, getting order spontaneously from chaos), so what should I say to tell him he's wrong that actually like makes sense (not just saying no you're wrong)?

What arguments should I use to try to convince him? Like what holes can I try to poke in his logic?

OK, well i talked to him about it and tried to get him to come to our church last weekend, but he got pretty mad actually and said that he's an atheist and says that "religion is the opiate of the masses" or something like that and that it is antithetical to human progress because it supplants logical, procedural thinking with "unfounded" belief. So people will accept their situations because they think there's an afterlife, so they can be oppressed more. I mean, I don't want to see him go to hell or something, but could god forgive him for at least being thorough? Like he says that there's no proof of god and scientific deductions can plausibly explain the universe, so he won't believe in a god unless he sees proof. Otherwise I think he feels like he'd be blindly believing in something that (in his mind) isn't necessarily true.

So like then God will decide what punishment I should give him? Or will he just be denied eternal life at His right hand? Also, this has been bugging me...could everything in the faith be a trick? Like could God have sent down the bible and Christ in order to sort out not the faithful from the unfaithful but the faithful from the inquisitive? I mean, it seems to me like a supreme being wouldn't care very much about mortals worshipping him, but if he wanted to find the least gullible among the mortals it would seem like a good way (short of just scanning their brains or something).

Hey, I saw that you had some religious knowledge from that Mike Montgomery photo and I wanted to ask you something about the Word of God that I've wondered about for a long time. I have a friend who insists on working on the Sabbath (ski park labor) without even going to church at all. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.". So I guess my question is: Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it? Isn't both a sin? Letting him be AND killing him (as said in the 10 commandments of course)? What should I do? I can't just let this sacrilege contaminate MY eternal soul...

your about me profile statement - is awesome!