The Problem with Christians

[AJW333]

When I use the term "free will" it is with the understanding that it relates to actions that are possible.

When god is the one that decides what is and is not possible- and when to suspend those decisions in the form of answered prayer or miracles- then we already have a god that is limiting free will. To claim that he's now suddenly unwilling to is an entirely arbitrary and self-serving rationalization.

You may have to reword this as I don't follow the argument.

So, if free will concerns the ability to decide upon an action but not the ability to be automatically successful at it, then god can intervene at the acting stage, without infringing on free will at all. Rapists always get flacid, mass shooters find their bullets always miss, scams never work because bank accounts always mysteriously reverse any fraudulent deposits, that sort of thing. There is no sense in which free will excludes god from acting in the world in whatever way he wishes. That argument is a non-starter.

I wouldn't say that God doesn't interfere with free will - he does. Does that mean that free will no longer exists? Not at all.

 Freedom of speech exists but there are limitations to it and it is possible that some people are not able to exercise such a freedom.

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Any ideas how sophisticated, self replicating DNA codes wrote themselves from a bunch of random chemicals?

First off: if we can't explain it, does that mean we must default to your god did it?

The way I look at it, there is no such thing as a random code. Entropy takes care of that. Given that all life depends on very sophisticated code, I see that you have a problem with life getting off the ground in the first place.

Random activity = no code. No code = no life.

In fact, experimental data shows that the building blocks of DNA form naturally in certain circumstances:

Be that as it may, you have to assemble those building blocks in a meaningful sequence to make intelligent code and therefor life. This doesn't happen through random activity.

Lastly, I'd like to pick up on your comment about reversing entropy, because I think you have a misunderstanding of that term. See, entropy applies to closed systems, and the Earth is not that. The Earth is within a closed system though, which is the universe, and taken on that scale, what we have is an extremely small incidence of an increase in localized order within a much larger system that doesn't decrease in entropy because of this. None of that is precluded within our understanding of entropy, and in fact it's even debatable whether life counts as a decrease in entropy anyway, given what life tends to do as it evolves in complexity. Look at our big-ass cities and tell me life hasn't resulted in disorder greater than would exist on Earth without it.

Well that's an interesting argument but looking at a barren earth 4.5 billion years ago turning into a place that is literally teeming with incredibly complex life forms, it still represents a massive reversal of local entropy, especially considering that the contributions from outside the local system of the earth appear to be somewhat limited.