Petitionary Prayer

FordFestivaPhilosophy

I’ve been doing some thinking on the problem of petitionary prayer, and some of the responses don’t seem to be entirely convincing to me. First, the argument:

1. God is omniscient and omnibenevolent.
2. If God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, he will always know and do what is best.
3. If God always does what is best, he cannot respond to petitions.

If person A asks God for X.
X is either the best thing to do, or it is not.
IF X is the best thing to do, God will do it.
IF X is not the best thing to do, God will not do it.
So, God either does X or does not because it is the best thing or not the best thing, not because he was asked.

4. Therefore, God cannot respond to petitions.

The traditional response to this is slightly vague, and I do not find it entirely satisfying. Typically, people will say that the moral landscape of the situation changes by virtue of a question being asked. But how, exactly, is this change happening? At least in some real life examples, it is not clear that petition shapes the moral landscape, given you have enough knowledge. Should one deny help to someone, simply because they did not ask you? If you know someone is suffering and you have the power to help (God does), and you know what is best for you to do, how could you justify not helping them? Is it because they refuse to humble themselves before you? If so, then doesn’t that seem just a little petty for a being such as God? Plus, the degree to which you would have to shape the moral landscape would have to be quite dramatic, as it is supposed that by asking you are changing the best possible thing that God could do in a certain circumstances.

Let us say, for instance, somebody is starving in front of you, and you have the power to stop that suffering at no cost to you. It would seem that the moral landscape is fairly clearly defined, and that, if that person were to ask you for help, the change would be so marginal that it would not affect your human obligation in any significant way. Why should we suppose it is different for God? Why does our petitioning to God play such a dramatically larger roll in the moral landscape that it seemingly does when we petition a fellow human? Thus, while this argument attempts to attack the conditional in premise 3, it is not clear how exactly it does so.

I have thought that, were we to remove the condition that there is a best possible action for God in any particular circumstance, then it seems that perhaps one could affect the moral landscape in a slight way, and God could help without not doing the best possible thing, for there is no such thing. You merely asked God to choose between two options, both of which were fitting his character, and your asking so slightly changed the landscape so that it tended in your favor. Thus, the effect one has on the moral landscape would be greatly diminished, but one could still have effective petitionary prayer.

musicpianoaccordion

1. God is omniscient and omnibenevolent.
2. If God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, he will always know and do what is best.

You are saying that God should do what is best and forget about human freedom. Don't you think the best is for us to choose the greatest good rather than God forcing us. If God is love He cannot force us to love. Love is a choice.

Thus
1. God is omniscient and omnibenevolent.
2. If God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, he will always know what is best for us but not force us to do good.

3. If God always does what is best, he cannot respond to petitions.

Petitions has been said to be a way for us to partake in God's creation process even though all good come from Him. A parent could probably bake a cake better without his children but it is good for the children to be with their father and create with him.

You seem to take fullness of God and make into a wierd syllogism. I would not do this so I can only point to the things I've been told.
I'm looking forward to the person who can come up with a good syllogism in defense of prayer of petitions.

Ben Hancock

Let us say, for instance, somebody is starving in front of you, and you have the power to stop that suffering at no cost to you. It would seem that the moral landscape is fairly clearly defined, — FordFestivaPhilosophy

While it certainly seems we may have an obligation to help the person starving, our help may very well be rejected, as people often reject help offered to them for various reasons. If instead we had waited until they asked for help, our help would actually be 'help' because it would be utilized. To apply this observation to your scenario, it would seem that asking would not change God's vision of moral goodness, but rather our own reception to God's vision of moral goodness. If God were to offer help to someone who did not ask, that help may not mean anything, may be rejected, or may be abused in such a way that it would not be good for God to grant the request until it was explicitly asked for.

Now, to be clear, I personally believe God does not withhold help until asked, but the asking instead changes our receptiveness to His help. So in the example you offered God would be always willing to offer food but petitionary prayer would change the person's willingness to accept the food or not. When the person is willing, then Good will offer the food. To relate it to your argument, then, it would seem that premise 3 is false. God always does what is best, and that can include responding to petitions, for the petition has changed what is best.

lupac

The most satisfying response, in my opinion to the problem of petitionary prayer, is an attack on premise 1. Why do we characterize God as omnibenevolent? There are many examples of God acting in scripture where it doesn’t seem like he is really doing what is best. I’m thinking specifically of the near-genocide God commands of the Israelites to enter the promised land. If we assume that justice as humans perceive it is not unwholly like the justice that God employs, then it seems like God didn’t do the right thing in commanding them to do this act. Of course, there is also the problem of evil. Is God really doing what is best when he allows for gratuitous suffering? I don’t think so. Perhaps God is as loving and as good as possible, and true omnibenevolence is impossible.

This argument is simple:
If God is omnibenevolent then he will always do the best thing
God doesn’t always do the best thing
God is not omnibenevolent (1,2 MT)

Then we really have no problem with petitionary prayer because God is not held to an impossible standard of goodness. If we ask we shall receive and if we seek we shall find, but God needs and wants to hear our prayers to decide what is best to do next.

We obviously don’t want to leave God only as good as humans, and so I propose that we conceptualize God as being all-loving. Theists often characterize God as all-knowing (knowing everything that can be known) to avoid paradoxes related to omniscience, they will also call him all-powerful (has the power to do any possible thing) to avoid paradoxes related to omnipotence. Why not think of God as all-loving (doing the best possible) instead of omnibenevolent to avoid paradoxes like these.

tenderfoot

↪lupac

I think the reason we characterize the Judeo-Christian God (which I assume you are referring to) as omnibenevolent is on account of references in scripture describing him as good and perfect. For example, in Deuteronomy 34 it is written “His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.” And In Matthew 48 Jesus says “the Father is perfect” during the sermon on the Mount. It would be very problematic if this God was not all-good or perfect. If he were just somewhat good (more good than humans) and all powerful, this does not seem like a God worth trusting or worshiping or petitioning in prayer.

This argument is simple:
If God is omnibenevolent then he will always do the best thing
God doesn’t always do the best thing
God is not omnibenevolent (1,2 MT) — lupac

I’d like to challenge premise one of your argument. I think it is possible that God IS omnibenevolent even if he doesn’t always do the best thing. God can be infinitely good and be capable of infinite goodness in any particular situation, but perhaps to achieve a greater good, in the individual moments he acts in ways that are GOOD but not the BEST.

What are you suggesting when you say, “Why not think of God as all-loving (doing the best possible) instead of omnibenevolent to avoid paradoxes…” I’m not sure how switching the description to all loving mitigates the problem of not doing the best thing. Perhaps we both agree that God does not do the best conceivable thing in particular situations because it isn’t possible for him (maybe his action affects other situations, or to do the absolute best would violate laws of our world that are of greater overall importance)? I think in this case, God is still omnibenevolent, despite not doing the very best thing in every individual situation.

There are certainly examples from scriptures of God acting in ways that don’t seem the “best” to us. These are very difficult sometimes to even understand as good, let alone best. God commands the Israelites to kill every living being during battles. God punishes multiple generations for the sins of one individual. God considers wiping out an entire city before Moses debates him to spare the righteous. These do not seem to be evidence of an omnibenevolent God. Maybe this argument is a little out there…but perhaps these are example of God doing what was good and made sense to a particular people group 3000 years ago, but from our point in history and our interactions with God in the twenty first century we are sure he did not act in the best way. If there is a way to reconcile these ancient stories as evidence of God being good, even if he’s not doing the best conceivable thing, I think such examples do not need to imply a lack of omnibenevolence.

Mysteryi

Petitionary prayer is basically a prayer in which you ask God for something. It seems to make no sense as it can be hard to see how human prayers could affect what God does. I say this because God would be omniscient and would already be aware of our needs.
I argue that petitionary prayer is useless is because of how it interacts with free will. Petitionary prayer seems to imply that God would intervene with the human world. If God were to intervene, then it would be to help us make the right choices to fix what we would create from our bad choices that were made freely. But if God is intervening in this way, then isn’t he technically overriding our freedom to make decisions? And the more God does this, our decisions are no longer really our decisions. And if they are not our decisions, then how are we supposed to be held responsible for them? And we need to be responsible for our choices for them to have any moral significance. So my argument would sort of go something like this:
1. If our decisions are not influenced through intervention by God, then we are held responsible for our decisions.
2. We are held responsible for our decisions.
3. Our decisions are not influenced through intervention by God. (1,2 MP)
4. If petitionary prayer was useful, then our decisions are influenced through intervention by God.
5. Petitionary prayer is useless. (3,4 MT)

CFR73

↪Mysteryi

Thanks for sharing this! Unfortunately, though, it seems your argument is invalid in its form.

You claim that premise 3 of the argument follows from premises 1 and 2 by means of modus ponens, but this is not the case. In premise 1 you offer a conditional, and instead of affirming the antecedent, as a modus ponens argument would, you instead affirm the consequent, rendering the inference from premises 1 and 2 to premise 3 invalid. This is because the premises of an argument that include a conditional and then affirms the consequent could be true, but the conclusion of the argument could still be false (e.g. 1. if you live New York, then you live in the U.S. 2. You live in the U.S. 3. So, you live in New York).

Maybe you just accidentally switched up the antecedent and the consequent, which could be fixed and could give the argument its validity in form. Instead, premise one could be put like this:

1. If we are held responsible for our decisions, then our decisions are not influenced through intervention by God.

This would allow the rest of the argument to follow validly and not undermine how you ultimately reach your conclusion instead.

As far as the soundness of the argument, separate from the validity of its form, I think premise 4 to be a false premise. First, by "influenced," I take it that you mean "overridden" based on what you wrote above before laying out the argument, so that is what I will mean when I use "influenced."
It seems, to me, that petitionary prayer could be useful without our decisions having to be influenced by God's intervention. It certainly seems plausible that our ability to make free decisions could remain intact while God intervenes in response to a petitionary prayer. I do not see how an answered petitionary prayer, such as someone who is sick and asks for healing is this healed by God (this is also an instance of where petitionary prayer is useful), would entail that this person's free will, i.e. the decisions they make, is being overridden. Because of this, I think premise 4 to be false.

In summary, this argument is invalid because of its form. However, if the form was fixed, I still think it to be false in light of the objection I rose to premise 4 of the argument.

Petitionary Prayer

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