You got most of it, but one big difference: “It is not that ‘God prefers’, but I and other humans need to have this very simple easy method of expressing a very little faith to help with our humility.”
I know you do not think the Garden story is real, but you can still get a lot of information from that story. God shows us His preference for us is daily walking with us and having us in a wonderful place, but one thing we learn from the story is the Garden is a lousy place for humans to fulfill their earthly objective.
The objective drives everything and the need to express just a little faith helps with the objective.
Okay, thank you for your reply. I have to point out that I am just making sure I understand you correctly so that I don't do you the disservice of misrepresenting your views when I answer them.
Now, here is my problem with what you wrote. First, it is contradicted by Christianity itself. We see God performing miracles all the time, in the stories about Him. He resurrects the dead, he helps people walk on water, He heals the sick in impossible ways, parts oceans, sends food and fire down from heaven.
You say that God will not reveal Himself too openly, for fear of depriving people of the gift of faith, but this is obviously not so; He's been doing exactly that for millenia. More than that, Christians frequently claim that God is revealed already - that His presence is so obvious, it takes an act of will to disbelieve in Him, and that the Resurrection is so undeniable that it is proof of Christianity. I've seen these arguments many times, and I'm sure you have too.
The second objection is that the idea that God must not reveal Himself too openly because it would deprive us of the gift of faith doesn't make sense on its own terms. How does it harm our love and devotion to God if He reveals that He exists? It would still be our free choice how we react to that knowledge. It's impossible to love a person until you know that they are real. Christians believe that God is real, and so can love Him, but unbelievers cannot love God, even if they wish to, since as far as they are concerned He doesn't even exist.
However, it doesn't matter that your argument fails on its own terms, because my question was: why do Christians only pray to God for things that might happen naturally, and never pray for the impossible?
So, never mind that the argument is flawed - it's quite possible that Christians believe it, and don't ask God to answer impossible prayers because they know that He will not, for the reasons you have stated. But the problem is, that answer doesn't make sense either. Quite simply, that is
not what Christians believe - with the exception of the few apologists who invented the argument. Christians around here, would you say that's true?
@cvanwey, and other nonbelievers who spent decades around here, is there some secret rule that Christians know about, that they won't ask God for impossible things because He doesn't want to show Himself too clearly? Is there anywhere in the Bible where we can find support for this? Well, you can probably find isolated verses in the Bible to justify anything, of course, but it goes against the whole narrative of the Bible, about a God who very much does reveal Himself, in many and obvious ways.
So it seems that this is just an after-the-fact rationalisation, thought up to justify the fact that God does not in fact answer impossible prayers - as we saw earlier in this thread, in the case of the unfortunate girl who died and whose parents tried to pray her back to life.
So this brings us back to the question: why do Christians only pray to God for things that might naturally occur anyway?
And the only answer I can think of is that they believe - from personal and historical and cultural experience - that God doesn't actually answer impossible prayers, ever.
Now as an atheist, I'm pretty sure I know the reason why. But for a Christian, this poses a big problem, if they think about it. Christians believe that God does answer prayers; why not impossible ones? Why not miracles? Oh, sure, not all the time - but at least some of the time? Even once? There's so many stories of God answering such prayers, even stories from modern times. But we never get to hear about them ourselves.