So, your testimony is that unknowable, unfathomable gawds (which religionists slather with various human attributes), maybe don't listen to or respond to prayers. So why pray at all? At least to me, pleading for "stuff" seems like hassling with the gawds- praying for some reward in exchange for a specific behavior, in other words: influence peddling. As to the efficacy of prayer, let’s see the preponderance of evidence, and let's apply critical thinking to it and see if it withstands scrutiny. As a matter of course, everything that religionists delineate in their appeals to gawds we must hold supernaturalism against by way of standard.
The issues that religionists create for themselves are resolved when you take the gawds out of the equation. No issues at all -- not a single paradox. We have free will, we write our own destiny as we move through lineartime, we are responsible for the kind of world we live in, the "plan" is within our hands and is imperfect because we are imperfect, and thus changes-- exactly as it is playing out. The concerns about prayer and bargaining with the gawds are satisfied once you abdicate the notion that there's a "guiding intelligence" from a supernatural realm involved with our existence.
She has a bell for when this thread is posted, so she will be along within twenty minutes. How much do you want to bet she will accuse me of spamming, which is what she does regularly on these types of threads.
