Given technology progression and another billion years (or trillion?), I easily believe in a creator. I would say that analyzing where we are today strengthens belief in God. I could see the big bang kicked off by a Creator, accelerated ( outside of time ), then manipulated in what we call a day. I disagree with Evolution however. Dinos could possibly be from a previous run at earth where God cleaned the slate with a celestial collision, etc. Analytical thinking has strengthened my belief. I mean, come on... we can clone already and it's only been a few thousand years for us. Granted, we were only made in His image and may not have what it takes biologically to circumvent time, etc. but I easily believe it could happen by a better Being.

I'm surprised this is a top story. The two aren't similar at all as has already been established.

Anyone know of a link to download the client before open beta signup?

Have him start with mainstream languages and tools - the ones whose sole purpose is to make programming life easy. Visual Studio > Visual Basic Express. Loads of examples and tutorials out there geared toward youth. The migration to Visual C++ will be easy since he will already know the IDE.