Why People Think They Need to Pray

[robvalue]

Indeed! I'd be very interested in any theist explaining away this problem. If God does answer a prayer, that means he did in fact have a way to improve his plan; or else he is now making his plan worse because of accommodating the prayer. I suppose the nearest thing to a solution here is that God changes his plan to another equivalently good plan that accommodates the details of the prayer. That's a bit ridiculous, I wonder if anyone will go with that? If by changing the prayer that makes the person happier than they would otherwise be, then surely that makes the plan better in of itself. If not, he must add a negative factor in some other area to compensate for this happiness bonus. So you're asking God to shift stuff about; this still amounts to telling him how to do his job.

If he is changing his plan repeatedly because of prayers, then his initial plan is pretty pointless huh.

I think what we're dealing with is the contradictory beliefs that God answers prayers; yet has an unchanging master plan. The cognitive dissidence allows the theist to believe both at once.

And even if z person only prays  "Thy will be done," that's still suggesting that god's will won't be done unless we pray for it to be done. Otherwise what is the point? As in any other area, the theists only solution is a fiat insistence that no contradiction exits.

Indeed!

No theist has even done that much in response so far. Maybe the glaring contradictory problems have hit home for some people.