Intercessory prayer is pointless

[SteveII]

This was an old thread I made at TTA, and was reminded of by another here. I figured I'd post this separately.

Christians frequently engage in intercessory prayer. When I went to church, it was a weekly thing, and people going through any amount of trouble talk about it all the time. This is all based on Christian's own ideas that God is effectively "able and willing" to fix a problem that he caused/allowed, and also that he has a will, and his will will "be done".

The sad thing is, regardless of if you're talking about a sickness, natural disaster, or some other "act of God" type of problem, the outcome is always the same. There are three ways and only three ways this can play out. For this discussion, we won't worry about why God caused or allowed the problem. That will be chalked up to [mysterious ways]. Starting from that point, one of three things will happen:

• God caused/allowed the problem for some reason, and he plans on fixing it. Perhaps this was to strengthen people, or whatever. The reason is moot. He caused/allowed it, and he's fixing it, anyway. Prayer does nothing in this case.
  
• God caused/allowed the problem for some reason, and he is not fixing it. Again, the reason doesn't matter. Maybe it's just that person's time. Regardless, prayer does nothing in this case.
  
• God caused/allowed the problem and will make it persist unless people pray to fix it. Then, and only then, does God fix the problem. So, the good news is prayer works in this case. The bad news is, the problem only exists in the first place so God can coax people into asking him to fix it. What the shit?
  

And that's it. There's no magical fourth option that both has prayer working and God not being a massive twat. I knew a guy like that in college. He'd cause problems just so he could fix him, and everyone hated that guy. We didn't sing his praises; we cut all ties with him.

Option #4: From the foundations of the world, God knew that person x would pray. Prayer has significant benefits to the person praying that goes beyond just the request. Depending on the butterfly effect of answering that prayer and his overall will, God has already decided if it will be answered.