Can prayer change God's perfect plan?

[Mystical]

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!!!

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.  

Excuse me but if this is your belief.. Then what do you believe happens to babies (innocents) who are killed before choosing your god? If free will is the reason for all the suffering in the world, how is it so easily removed from babies, or "people who haven't heard the word of god"? Where's their free will?

No offense, but if I were a baby sent straight to heaven and knew what I know about your god--I'd try to remove myself from him as far as possible. I'd rather an eternity with the devil in your biblical literal hell, than with the being who created it in the first place knowing a that a single eternal spirit would end up there. 

The path is narrow, after all, so the majority of those he created he knew would end up in hell. And no, there's nowhere in the bible where it says anything other than eternity, and fiery suffering hell. 

To Miss Mellisa, hello from a fellow Melissa! 

I too had a question that never stopped circling my brain, again and again, for years. That question was, why are my grandparents surely in hell for suicide, when grandma found out she had cancer and grandpa had spent a lifetime in mental anguish? They didn't want to go to nursing homes in the 80s understandably (who would?), and they didn't want to burden their young adult children who had blooming families, with their own needs? Since the age of 6 or 7, I asked and sought answers about this. From god, from preachers, from my mom and dad, etc. 
This question didn't disappear. I even got suicidal myself, at one point, in protest to this unfair judgement that my loved ones, and others, are subject to. Suicide victims are probaby the most heart wrenching cases of human suffering on this planet secondary to murder victims.
For years I decided that the god I followed surely wasn't the god as described in the bible, and I reasoned Hell out of my belief. For a god of love, pure love, could not possibly send most of his creation to hell!? I reasoned that it's a bluff, and that God would save everyone from hell in the end. But, the more I read the bible the more I came to the realization that the god of the Bible is not who I thought I had given my life to! He is a jealous, vindictive god. Arbitrary and seemingly without conscience in the OT. No wonder church kept it's teachings in the NT. But then I read Jesus' own words stating that not a single letter of the Law shall be altered until the Judgement comes. Check out my signature for the passages if you like. 

Some apologists like Drich here, will tell you to make you feel better that hell is an eternal separation from god. In my eyes he's still in the "denial" phase. But that's why we have these Religious subforums. Christians and Atheists alike like to parlay their thoughts, beliefs, and reasons for non belief here. Most every other Christian forum and most Atheist forums limit the subjects of interaction and deny free thought and free speech. But this forum does not. 

It is mainly used for making fun of people of faith and pointing out every time a religious person does something bad.

That's horrible.

No, the Religion section of our forum is not for making fun of or denigrading theists, and I surmise that you knew that when you came to post here-- I suspect that you, having read our public discourse and finding valid arguments from both sides in healthy discourse, felt you'd found the "trenches" of the war for souls. Theists and deists, Atheists and everyone inbetween--we all end up in the Religion section. For conversation, for reminiscece, for reinforcement, for curiousity, support, for many things. A lot of us were priorly religious, after all. These subjects are interesting to us still, mainly because there's not many places on earth to run away from Religion. Most governing forces in our lives are directly tied to Religion too.
I don't know why Catholic Lady would be so misleading and cynical, to be honest. Free thought comes in many forms. Christians come here threatening eternal doom very often. I'm sure they think that that is the most effective way to get our attention. Well, in return, you end up with posters like Last Poet who made the analogy about praying to a jar, equating its efficacy to that of praying to god. Belive or not, that's just common sense to him. It's how he believes. And yet there was someone who took offense. Because his common day thoughts were actually offensive to this Christian. 
Maybe that's why Catholic Lady said as she did. Because despite her seemingly friendly candor and endless interactions in subforums that don't have anything to do with religion where she seems to be just another person amongst just some other people--deep down, she gets offended too when she goes to the Religion section.

 Personally when I'm  offended, I tend to ask why I'm offended and evaluate what I'm offended about, then assess whether I'm correct in my stance. Like Last Poets 'offensive' analogy. I mean, Isn't it true? Couldn't you pray to a jar and have good things happen to you that you could attribute to praying to the jar? Catholics are renowned for praying to vessels other than Jesus Christ himself. Even when a face that looks like Jesus or Mother Mary, ends up appering on mundane objects. Like trees, or tortillas or toast. Miracles have bden claimed by the church too, based on nothing my more substntial. So why is it odd to compare prayer to god and prayer to a jar? Especially when the prayers of millions of slum babies go unanswered whilst god is supposedly helping people in first world countries find their keys???

I like the Religious section, for instance, because I am still waiting for someoe to pop in and show actual tangible proof of the existence of a creator (I'm an afterlife hopeful, what can I say?). I've looked far and wide and found the "evidence" that I thought was evidence, was farce.

Constant new findings in archaeology and science are always moving forward at lightning speed and I like to keep up with their findings compared to the bible, and the responses that Religion comes up with. Sometimes it's amusing, and sometimes it is something I need to stay vigilant about. Like how Religion treats and views homosexuality in our societies. Science says we are all bisexual on a sliding scale, and observation shows that there are over 15k species of animals who practice it. It's essential for social interactions to propogste those species. One of many reasons, to de-escalate dangerous power strugales in a society. The more social the society, the higher the prevalence of homosexuality. Yet my own family and then those in charge of running my far superior complex society condemn homosexuality based upon the Bible. So Religion is very much pertinent to my life still. I'm not homosexual, I'm bisexual. And I'm married. And I want my child to be able to choose to be whomever they want to be and love whomever they feel love for.  

History is being written with proof, not just a pen. Also a lot of my family are still believers. Whilst I stay neutral amongst them regarding their beliefs unless they ask of me otherwise, I do want to be prepared for the times I'm "attacked" by the unavoidable overly pious who cannot afford me the same treatment. 

I'm sad that for as long as she's been here, Catholic Lady is unable to relate to us  people in the Religion subforum.

Prayer gives you the opportunity to participate in God's plan. And perhaps it is God's plan that sometimes His will is to be implemented through prayer.

You pretty much just said to the effect, "we vote and are allowed to in order to allow us to participate in the outcome even though the election was rigged in the first place."

Damn, you're good. Are you American?

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.

This.
The bible speaks about prayer being about confidence, apart from being about asking and receiving, but I still feel uneasy.
Talked to some of my other Christian friends today. Didn't get a convincing answer from them. Tough question.

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Ask your preacher then. They usually have the official refutation.