Can prayer change God's perfect plan?

[Valyza1]

New here and confused about this.


I saw a meme today, with the question in title. This is a toughie. 

I am a person of strong faith, and want others with strong faith to chime in on this. Help!!!

You must have lived a very sheltered life to now, seeing as you've not encountered the problem of evil before. It's been worried over by theists since before christianity and not one has come up with a satisfactory answer.

In fact the only good answer came from Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

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I wouldn't say my faith is relatively strong, but that isn't really necessary to answer the question.  As far as I see it, nothing can change God's Perfect Plan.  Your prayer is part of your free will, but YOUR free will is part of God's Plan.  People object  to the idea of one's will being free if God already knows what it will be, but what God KNOWS is irrelevant to freedom.  It's what God IMPOSES that restricts freedom.  And God does not impose your will from being acted upon, thus it is free.  And He doesn't need to in order for His Plan to succeed, because your will changes by itself.  

If god has a perfect, unchanging plan, then you don't have free will because your thoughts and actions were determined for you long before you even existed and you have no choice in the matter.

Freedom can't be absolute (which is I think what Sam Harris is recognizing in his writings), but it's free at the point where one identifies with the predetermined causation of choices. Freedom is a first person experience.