Can prayer change God's perfect plan?

[Pat Mustard]

There is a fly, Chrysomya bezziana, which propogates by implanting its eggs in open wounds or mucous areas of warm blooded animals and the resulting larvae bury down into the flesh under the wound, hence its common name the old world screwworm fly (there is an unrelated fly in the Americas which does the same). In Indonesia there was a case of a nine year old boy whose ear was infested with the larvae, after pulling out ten or more from the ear cavity doctors noticed his eye was reddened and realised there was another colony of larvae sfter burying themselves inside that poor boy's eye.

On a more personal note my mother's older brother was by all accounts a brilliant man able to make thousands on shares in the fifties, a time when a tbousand pounds would keep a family well off for a year or more, and an absolute fount of knowledge, but I only ever knew him as a drooling madman stuck in an insane asylum because with the brilliance came paranoid schizophrenia.

How many Rembrandts, Mozarts, Einsteins, Shakespeares and other geniuses died not knowing their gifts because they lived in a world where life was nasty, brutish and shorts? Probably millions. How much better would the world be if they could have discovered them? Immesurably.

To quote my favorite author, Terry Pratchett:

One day I was a young boy...when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. Even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued... As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."
— Lord Vetinari, Unseen Academicals

It makes me angry when people tell me about "gods perfect plan", because it shows their wilful blindness to the world, their self imposed inability to see its triumphs and tragedies, and to look at what they have and what they can do to make it a better world. This is likely the only place we will ever have, and we could possibly make it a paradise (and definitely could make it much better), yet too many are pissing that chance up against a wall because of an imaginary next life to come.

To quote another favourite author, Alfred Bester, from the climax of The Stars My Destination

You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you. Every you...'[...]Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars