> Very funny, but you missed the point. The point is much more subtle and particular than that. It is simply this: the temporal status of prayers is is irrelevant to the temporal status of events they can affect. This is the case because events have, for God, no relevantly hindering temporal properties. Of course, as you note, events that are now past cannot be changed; my point is that the potential is there to pray now, and have those prayers used to affect events that are now past. Put another way, it is technically possible that one's prayers now could have been used already to affect events that are now resolved. Sorry for the confusion.

This is completely the Bill & Ted Problem (I am so naming it such). Bill & Ted are in a sticky situation. They task their future selves (who have a time machine) to provide them with a way out of the situation. To Present B&T, they suddenly have Ted's Dad's keys. In the future, though, they *have* to go back in time and put the keys there.

Likewise, the only way a prayer could be said to affect a past event is if the person doing the praying was praying that an event be resolved the way it already has (from that person's frame of reference). So the timeline would look something like this:

1) Alice is in a bad situation and needs to get out of it.
2) God, knowing that step 4 will happen, intervenes and helps Alice out of it.
3) The situation is resolved in Alice's favor.
4) Alice prays that God gets her out of the sticky situation she was in (and has already been gotten out of).

Do you see the ludicrousness of that? Why would you possibly pray for events to come out the way they already have?? By intervening *before* a prayer is made (even though it will happen), God is removing the impetus for a person to pray for his help.

If you were to pray for events to be resolved differently in the past, and God were to change things retroactively, that would also remove you from ever praying. Do you see what I mean?

Stephen