Prayer is not meant to conform God's will to ours, but to conform ours to His. You don't get that.

We are talking about intercessory prayer here. That means it is logically impossible for this statement to be true. The only way intercessory prayer has any chance of existing is if we have the ability through prayer to actually change the mind of god. We have to be able to cause an outcome that would be different from what would have happened in the absence of the prayer.

If god's will is set and what ever will be will be then praying for anything would be a complete waste of time because the outcome would be the same regardless.

Let us not forget that in the bible when god was talking about destroying Sodom and Gamora Lot actually haggled with god about how many righteous people would have to be in the city before he would destroy the place. Lot actually changed his mind and got him to say if only one person was righteous was in the city he would not destroy the city. Well he said that but in actuality he concluded that Lot and his family should just move because he was going to nuke the place. And that is what happened.

Also the limitations of prayer are only defended by the believers because you don't hear crap about the limitations of prayer in the bible. In fact the bible gives you ever impression that there are no limitations on the powers of prayer.

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains. Matthew 17:20
Whatever you ask in prayer shall be given to you. Matthew 21:22

In truth the bible makes it sound like the only prerequisite is faith. The faithful make is sound like the bible is lying. I leave it to you to decide which it is because reality seems to give me every impression that prayer is completely ineffective.

We are talking about intercessory prayer here. That means it is logically impossible for this statement to be true. The only way intercessory prayer has any chance of existing is if we have the ability through prayer to actually change the mind of god. We have to be able to cause an outcome that would be different from what would have happened in the absence of the prayer.

Remember that God does not have time lines like we do. It's not like He made up his mind about something and then heard a prayer. He knew about the prayers before they ever happened.

Are you a Calvinist?

EDIT: More to the point do you believe in predestination?

Quibble: The word "predestined" is found in some English translations of the Bible.

Are you a Calvinist?
EDIT: More to the point do you believe in predestination?

No, I'm not a Calvinist. To make a long story short, I don't think Calvin's theology gave sufficient room or a meaningful understanding of human freedom. His focus on God's glory, power, plan, etc., resulted in a one-sided view of the human person, history, God, etc., and does not do justice to the biblical data on these subjects.

Regarding "predestination," this is a highly loaded word. I don't believe in predestination in the Calvinist sense. I do believe history is the outworking of God's eternal plan and that all our free choices are included in that plan. Again being too short in my explanation, I believe in an understanding of predestination that affirms both the providence and all-encompassing plan of God for our history but that also affirms a meaningful and real role for human free acts. (By the way, the word "predestination" is found in the Bible and therefore all Christians must take the concept seriously. See Romans 8, Ephesians 1, etc.)

I am content to disregard the label of Calvinist and focus only on the position that you are asserting here which I have put in bold. There is no such thing as this, "...an understanding of predestination that affirms both the providence and all-encompassing plan of God for our history but that also affirms a meaningful and real role for human free acts." and that point is not even debatable. It is completely impossible for this state of affairs to exist in reality.

It would be like saying you believe in a football that is not a football. It is a matter of fact that X cannot be equal to "not X" and it cannot be both equal and not equal at the same time and it can't be neither for that matter.

It is a matter of fact that X cannot be equal to "not X" and it cannot be both equal and not equal at the same time and it can't be neither for that matter.

Remember that you're talking about a religion which claims both "X = 1" and "X = 3".

Yeah I have a problem with that too.

I have not seen evidence of a god's actual existence so it makes no sense for me to try and diagnose specifics about it. That would be like if I tried to tell you about the family structure of Bigfoot. I have to first find a Bigfoot and then I can learn specifics about it.

The reason that I can say it is impossible is because you are proposing a state of affairs that cannot exist in reality and that is revealed to us by using a logical model.

If our actions are already known by the mind of god before we even know them then we do not have free will because we would never be able to take an action that would be outside of the knowledge of god. In other words we would never be able to surprise god. God though we were going to do one thing but he was wrong and because of our freewill we did something else.

This would mean that all of our actions would already be scripted out in the mind of god and at no point would we be capable of deviating from that script.

So you see I do not have to presuppose anything to deduce that it is axiomatic that freewill cannot exist in the same reality as omniscience. The mere existence of a mind that could know all of our actions nullifies even the possibility of freewill.

Just because I know the script doesn't mean I wrote the script. I don't understand why you think that an omniscient being knowing how we will exercise free will precludes the logical possibility of free will.

Because omniscience is not simply constantly up to date. It is all knowing. Meaning the knowledge is already in hand. If god were ever wrong about our actions then he would not be omniscient and he is always correct about our actions then freewill have any value.

Think of it like this:
God created all of us already knowing what all of our decisions would be prior to our creation.
This means god knew our final destination prior to our being created.
The only logical conclusions are we either do not have free will or if we do have free will that our free will is irrelevant.

Given that free will would be nothing more than a vestige in this scenario it makes more sense that the free will never actually existed in the first place.

However I will concede that freewill can exist in the same reality as omniscience as long as you would be willing to concede that freewill would be irrelevant if that were the case.

Because omniscience is not simply constantly up to date. It is all knowing. Meaning the knowledge is already in hand.

"Up to date" and "already in hand" are meaningless to an omniscient being outside of time. That being can perfectly know our decisions even though we have free will because the omniscient being can see all of time simultaneously (so to speak).

OK, so god knows what will happen before it happens. Then do you believe that god is weak or that god is sadistic? Because if he knows that a child will be born with a terrible disease and live only a short time constantly in pain then either he isn't powerful enough to stop the conception or he's sadistic enough to let a baby and its family suffer. Or do we now go back to that "mysterious ways" thing? If so then perhaps abortion is one of those "mysterious ways" too.

I don't recall the part in the bible where god said abortion is wrong. I do however recall the part of Adam being a fully formed man but not alive till he took his first breath.which leads me to believe the bible feels life does not start till you take your first breath.

Because omniscience is not simply constantly up to date. It is all knowing. Meaning the knowledge is already in hand.

"Up to date" and "already in hand" are meaningless to an omniscient being outside of time. That being can perfectly know our decisions even though we have free will because the omniscient being can see all of time simultaneously (so to speak).

"That being can perfectly know our decisions even though we have freewill" <=This sentence is a logical impossibility.

It is not possible to perfectly know the decisions of a mind that has freewill because that mind would be the generator of those decisions. Basically those decisions would not exist to be known until the mind created them. If the omniscient mind exists then all of those decisions are already known all the way from the beginning to the end. So as I stated before if you want to call it freewill then sure you have a "freewill" but it is completely irrelevant and useless. It means literally nothing.

If there isn't an omniscient mind then it is possible that there are decisions that we create which were not only unknown but were also unknowable. We could be the creator of those choices and if that is true then we can have freewill that could mean something but even that is not a given.

EDIT: Also I feel a phrase like "outside of time" is nonsensical. We don't have any examples of anything that exists outside of time to know what it should look like. I also have the same problem with phrases like "outside the universe", "before time" and "nothing".