Dr. Craig, we have an article that is pretty timely in that it talks about

praying for who you want to become president of the United States, praying for political outcomes,

and the name of the article is the Evangelical Christian problem of prayer and agency, and it's

written from a female blogger. She is a feminist and a former Evangelical Christian. I think

she no longer is. I think she's an atheist or are agnostic. But she talks about how Michelle

Bachman prayed for Donald Trump to become president again, and it brings up, she said, a bigger

question. There's something odd, she says, in all of this, a human agency and the implications

of an omniscient omnipotent God. If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, is any going to make the best

decision no matter what we do? This is ultimately a much bigger tangle, and ultimately I think it's

wrapped up in the fact that the Old Testament God and Evangelical's Christian God are not the

same entities. Yes, yes, I know Evangelicals would disagree with me on this, she says. History

that there are many passages in the Old Testament where people ask God to do things, or beg God not

to do things, but the God portrayed in the Old Testament is fundamentally dissimilar to the

Christian God Evangelicals described today. The God of the Old Testament was a God who could make

mistakes, who could decide on one course, and then later be convinced to change his mind. This

isn't particularly consistent with omniscience or omnipotence. You want to stop their bill and just

comment on what she said so far? Well, so far, the argument is that if God is omniscient and omnipotent

and all good, I think we have to say, that then surely he will do the best thing no matter what we

pray, and I would agree, I think, with that, and insofar as the options are radically different from

each other in their goodness and their value, I think that she's right. And that's a great blessing

actually, that God doesn't always give us what we pray for because he knows what's best.

If God just simply gave us what we pray for, he might be like the genie in the bottle who

...