sourdough

if you believe that god already predetermined everything that will happen,
wouldn't you say that your prayers/wishes are meaningless!

WWSD

Well, that would work except I have not heard a lot of theists make the claim that thier god predetermined everything.

Most theists I have encountered dance around the predetermination question without saying much of anything at all.

The whole thing seems pretty silly to me.

philechat

It needs not say that God pre-determined everything to state the meaninglessness of prayer (except as psychological comfort). God, omniscient (let's leave the freewill problem behind) and omnibenevolent as He is, must know what is best for the man. So why should the man try to change God's will to the worse by praying?

dangin

Yes, for all these reasons, prayer is useless, and faith is a mental disease masquerading as a strength.

ex-xian

Well, there's always what C S Lewis said when his wife was dying (paraphrase). "Prayer doesn't change God or circumstances, it changes me."

bd-from-kg

It's not that simple. If God had foreknowledge, He would know before creating the world what prayers there would be, how sincere they would be, etc., if he were to make any given set of choices (in creating the world) and He could have taken all this into account in deciding which choices to make, thereby deciding which prayers He would answer and how.

Of course God would know what's "best for man", but what's "best for man" might depend on who prayed and what they prayed for. This is no different, in principle, from the fact that He would have to take into account all of the other choices that people would make in each possible world in deciding which possible world to actualize.

Naturally this sounds weird at first hearing, but it's no weirder than the way we'd have to think about virtually any aspect of our relationship with a being who transcends space and time.

By the way, I don't believe this stuff; I'm just pointing out that this argument goes nowhere, logically speaking.

ReasonableDoubt

Well in the Old Testament you've got people changing God's will much of the time. Moses pled with God to not destroy the Israelites and he complied; Jonah prayed for Ninevah to not be destroyed and he complied.
God was sorry that he created mankind so sent the flood to wipe everything out and start over.
He looked down from Heaven and saw people building the Tower of Babel so decided to mix up everyone's language.
Does this sound like a God who has everything predetermined?
But then it cuts into his omnipotence. IF God changes because of what mankind does, then mankind is running the show and GOd is put in the position of reacting.

diana

True. However, this runs up against the free will problem. If God already knows whose prayers will be sincere, then he already knows who the righteous are ("The prayers of a righteous man availeth much").

Most arguments against the EoG can't be kept separate from other issues. This is probably why this is one of the more heated and messy forums here.

d

philechat

There's a problem along this line of argument. Since what men prayed for necessary comes out of the man's own will (which is faulty compare to God's), it follows that every God's actions complying to the man's will must already be deemed good in accordance to God's original will for the man. Any "change of will" in God in compliance to the man's prayer implies that the original intention of God (considered by God without the man's prayer) to be "less good" than what is asked for by the man in prayer (the aformentioned "compliance"). Which will cut through God's attributes of omniscience and omnibenevolence directly.

dangin

As there ever been as succinct a thread that exposes all the problems with god? This should be a sticky, or a welcome 'must read' for all theists.