Can prayer change God's perfect plan?

[Aroura]

Look, I know theist absolutely MUST fit free-will into heir thinking, else their God is creating people who will be damned not by their own "free will", but because they are literally made that way by "Him" and cannot be any other way.  So I don't expect to be changing theists positions on this.  It is an absolutely necessary foundation for them to cling to for their god to not be a monster.  So they will do some award winning mental gymnastics to make it all fit.

Personally, I found letting go of God easier than letting go of free-will. It's all quite terrifying to think a) you are just a preprogrammed robot going through the motions you were programmed to go through, and b) Nothing is fair, there is no balance in the end.  No inherent meaning, and in the end, you wink out like a light and literally cease to exist.

That's all scary as fuck!  I still get anxiety pretty much daily from trying to work through this.  Reality is harsh, and the fact is, most people simply are not equipped to give up the comfort of the fantasy and face these very cold, very hard truths.  This isn't to call them children, or stupid, or weak.  Sometimes, I feel that way but that is just anger and frustration talking.  The reality is we are biologically driven to find meaning and feel free.  These things help keep the species alive, when we were primitive, they help keep up from losing the will to live and to procreate.  Natural selection makes this, up until this point, and advantageous adaptations.

I think we have become so technologically advanced so rapidly that these adaptations are no longer advantageous, and are perhaps actually going to cause massive destruction, but evolution is too slow to catch up the whole human race in time.  

If anyone out there really are determinists, then blaming people (in a negative emotional way) for not understanding all of this is futile.  We know they are just a product of their DNA and environment, and cannot be any other way.

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Ok, let me try again.

"Explain to yourself first, and then anyone here, how anything is free if it cannot be any other way because the outcome is already known by God."

So far, you're explanation is simply that God stands outside of time and space, but this does not even begin to answer the question, that only explains HOW he experiences all things (and not very well at that), it does not address at all how that gives you or anyone free will.  You've simply sidestepped the question, not answered it.

I feel like that is answering it though. Let's try this. Imagine you see me grabbing a slice of cheese pizza instead of pepperoni. You know I chose cheese because you're seeing me do it, right? That's God as well, seeing us making our choices. Except that's how it is for God at all moments of time. Not just in the present.

For instance, right now, you have the "choice" to respond to me or not.  God already knows which way that will be.  How are you choosing it, then?  Can you possibly CHOOSE the other way that God has not forseen?? 

If the answer to the underlined is no, then how is this a choice at all?

Again, God is not "forseeing". That would mean He's in the present, looking at the future. Rather, to Him there is no past, present, or future. He's seeing it happen all at once.

You are still just explaining how he sees it, not how that allows you to have choice.  We have already all agreed he sees it all for the sake of this argument.  How or where does not matter.  Saying that he sees the result of our choices does not explain how that makes those choices "Free".

(I forgot to address your example.  Yes, if I see you pick pepperoni pizza, that shows I know what you will do.  That does not demonstrate that you had the FREE CHOICE to choose cheese!  Doing a thing and/or knowing someone will do a thing in no way demonstrates that they had the free will to chose to do the other thing, and actually tacitly demonstrates the opposite.)

Answer this question:  Can you chose to do a thing that has not been seen (forseen, or past seen, or seen all at once, whatever you like).?  Can you chose to do a thing that god does not already know you will do? Yes or no. Just answer this and then we can move on.