(September 28, 2018 at 11:32 am)SteveII Wrote: You are asserting that God caused the cancer. It might be that you simply chose to smoke or go to the beach. So, I don't accept that God caused any cancer. Actually that's not a belief that Christians generally hold (if at all)--so it is a straw man argument.
While I did say "cause" in that post, I said "cause or allow" in the OP, because it doesn't really matter in the context of the discussion. The point is: if intercessory prayer could work, God has to have agency to fix the problem.
If he has that agency, your option #4 could be summed up as "God causes/allows problem because it benefits you to ask him to fix it". If he doesn't have agency, why call him God?
So, it wasn't a strawman so much as you attempting to dodge the point of the thread.
