Prayer and Faith

Let me just say this first: I feel very fortunate that I have people that care about me. I do not think there is anything better than that.

With that out of the way.

Prayer has always seemed a bit weird to me. People say things like "No matter what, God's gonna do what he's gonna do and that's that." If you say this, then why is there any need for prayer? How does it work in the system? You need to pray to show that you care? If God is going to do what he's going to do and He already has a Divine Plan for everything then A.) Is there any free will under that system if you assume that? and B.) Why does praying even matter? Why do you need to show that you care? Why are you trying to change things and cater to the heart of God by showing that you're true worshippers by praying? If it's already said and done in God's eyes, then how is catering to the heart of God going to change things? Why do you think it's going to? The bottom line is this:

If you think it's already all planned out, then why are you praying? 

Why do you think you can change it by praying? Even if God likes hearing it, it doesn't matter because it's all planned out anyway. 

Also, on a side note:

Faith is a SCAM. In any other arena other than religion, is faith ever an issue. Sure, you can guess and it feels good to take risks sometimes but to say that God likes faith feels like a SCAM to me now. As soon as you start asking about things too deeply and get to the point that true believers haven't really thought out things too thoroughly or just didn't want to or just couldn't or just haven't yet, they'll say "It's faith" and then wait for you to be amazed. The next question is "Why is faith good?" Then they'll basically not understand that. "Faith brings you closer to God" "God says faith is good." But why? You can't really answer that. No Christian I have ever met really can. "It's just faith." "God requires that you take a leap of faith." Why do you think that requirement is there? Is there some ulterior motive from the church? When people talk about the leap of faith, I feel like I would be jumping for no reason into nothingness...into an archaic set of a beliefs that even most of our forefathers in America didn't believe in. (More people go to church now than they did in colonial America.) Christians will admire faith for its simplicity but I'd say there's really no meaning in what they're saying and the argument could go on forever after that.