Intercessory prayer is pointless

[Jehanne]

But your god knew that you would, you had no choice in the matter.

That does not make sense. I know my wife will choose chocolate ice cream over butter pecan every time. Does that mean she is not exercising free will? God derives his knowledge of what we will do given every actual and counterfactual circumstance because of his perfect predictive knowledge.

The K-T event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 M years ago; did God cause and/or will that event to occur?

[RobbyPants]

Your phrase "God causes/allows problem because it benefits you to ask him to fix it" is way to simplistic.

Then elaborate.

Also, that line of thinking would not work on most of the world who do not ask him anything when they have problems.

You must know very different Christians than me. I've listened to them casually talk about wanting all sorts of favors. That being said, every church I've ever attended had a weekly deal where they'd list issues for a whole bunch of congregants and their families, and specifically ask God to intercede. Straight up.

Even if some huge percentage of them don't ask, it still has nothing to do with the ones that do, which is the topic of this thread. Stop trying to change the subject.

It would seem that it is more likely that there are problems in the world because of nature, evil choices of people, willful disregard of consequences, unintended consequences of choices, and bad luck. You can trace every problem all the way back to the beginning of the universe if you had enough information.

Another dodge. I'm honestly not interested on why you think it's the universe's fault when a fetus is born with Tay Sachs.

---

The K-T event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 M years ago; did God cause and/or will that event to occur?

It can apparently be traced back to some bad decision the dinosaurs made.

[Jehanne]

The K-T event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 M years ago; did God cause and/or will that event to occur?

It can apparently be traced back to some bad decision the dinosaurs made.

The dinos were here for 200+ M years; did God just get tired of them one day and decide to do them all in?  Of course, for you, this is not a serious question, but for our resident theists it should be.  If God does not cause cancer, how about asteroid impacts?

[Angrboda]

What you say here is contradictory to your option 4.

How can a person choose to get cancer, when god already knew what would happen before creation?

Since god does the creation, and during creation knew what will happen (because he programmed the human to, or willed it to be that way or whatever theists come up with). How can it be any one else fault but god?

No one chooses to get cancer. Our choice can lead to it. Our environment can lead to it (other people's choices). Our bad genes passed on from our parents can lead to it (more other people's choices).

God's knowledge of what we will freely choose does not limit our ability to choose it.

And God's choices lead to cancer, not just incidentally, but necessarily, otherwise God simply doesn't know. (And Molinism doesn't fix the problem either.)

[Abaddon_ire]

But your god knew that you would, you had no choice in the matter.

That does not make sense. I know my wife will choose chocolate ice cream over butter pecan every time. Does that mean she is not exercising free will? God derives his knowledge of what we will do given every actual and counterfactual circumstance because of his perfect predictive knowledge.

Your wife has no choice at all. god already knows.

[Drich]

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.

Prayer as Jesus out lines:
1 Acknowledgement, recognition and respect given to God
"our Father who is in Heaven holy is your name

2 Asking for the end of man's reign/Asking for the basically the book of revelation to be full filled, 
Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

3 you ask for your daily needs
give us this day our daily bread

4You ask God to make your salvation contingent on your own ability to forgive others.
Forgive my sin as or in the same way I forgive others

5 Keep me from sin
lead me not to temptation

6 closing with 
yours king glory and power amen.

Where in there do you see intercession? where in there aside from our daily need do you see a asking cermony/meaning where in Jesus' own example of pray is he saying it is ok to ask God for the crap you want in your life to make it easier? He doesn't.

Why?

Prayer is not about changing God's mind. Prayer is about need and changing your mind and heart to fit God. Look at thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. look at my translation. is there any part of you that does not want to see the worst parts of the book of revelation played out n your front yard? of course! but that is what prayer is. it is about changing your will to meet or at least seek God's will not the other way around!

Prayer is also a daily reminder that our sins hang on our own ability to forgive those who sin against us. meaning if we can not forgive, none can be forgiven.

That in a nut shell is the ONLY Example of NT prayer and what's more is was demonstrated by Christ Himself in Luke 11.

So intercessory 'prayer' is not prayer at all. We take an example of intercessory petitioning from Christ as well when he prayed for the centurion's little girl to be made well as they stood several days away. This is the difference between petition and prayer. petition is what you want from God prayer is what God wants from you. until we learn to pray very little petitions are ever answered.

There comes a point however when you know how to pray that you seek out prayer/God's will over your own petitions because you know in the end it will work out better than if you shortsightedly ask for something. I almost never ask or petition God for anything because he will give me exactly what I want, which may sound like a deal but in the end I will often see if I had stayed the course much better things would have come my way. or I get this thing and it was not what I really wanted.

If God is not answering your petitions learn to pray first.

[onlinebiker]

"Prayer Warrior" - now there's a self aggrandizing bit of bullshit. Like these do- nothing dweebs think they're cosmic lobbyists with access to the big poobah in the sky. Whatta load.


If you' re trying to impress people - "Jedi Knight" at least has a bit of following in the nerd community - and you get a light saber.

[RobbyPants]

Where in there do you see intercession? where in there aside from our daily need do you see a asking cermony/meaning where in Jesus' own example of pray is he saying it is ok to ask God for the crap you want in your life to make it easier? He doesn't.

So you're saying all the Christians in all the churches that have time carved out of every service are wrong? You're saying all the Christians privately praying for intercession are wrong?

I mean, I agree with you on that much.

[Minimalist]

The K-T event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 M years ago; did God cause and/or will that event to occur?

It can apparently be traced back to some bad decision the dinosaurs made.

The dinos were here for 200+ M years; did God just get tired of them one day and decide to do them all in?  Of course, for you, this is not a serious question, but for our resident theists it should be.  If God does not cause cancer, how about asteroid impacts?

The dinosaurs were far too smart to invent god.

[Bucky Ball]

If God is not answering your petitions learn to pray first.

Oh really ... like this Drich idiot know about god.

John 14: 14
You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
ANYTHING. He said ANYTHING. He lied out his ass.