I have been telling them this for the longest time Mark. If we are predetermined then prayers mean nothing; they are then only empty repetitions.
It never occurs to them to ask if the reprobate are also created in God's image, and if so why are they condemned for something they had no control over? It makes a mockery of God, it makes a mockery of our sin against God (because God orchestrates it), it makes Judas an innocent obedient servant of God who just got the "unlucky number" along with the Pharaoh and Lot's curious wife (talk about curiosity killed a wife!)...to name just a few.
It makes a mockery of man's fall and ultimately of Christ's own surfing and death. It was God (the Father) who arranged to have His son killed for his own glory...They can't even get their own name right: it's deformed not reformed.
It makes Adam and Eve God's sacrificial lambs, born and raised for slaughter. He makes them pristine and naive with the intent and knowledge that they will fail, because He created them to fail! He sets them up for a failure so that He can punish them and all subsequent generations until His own Son must die to satisfy God's offended (sic) ego. they just can never explain: Why would God ever be "offended" IF HE IS SOVEREIGN and IN CONTROL and nothing happens without His approval?
Ultimately they will tell you that God created evil because He created everything! They treat evil as "creation." This is what happens when a book that was not meant to be interpreted by every Dick and Jerry becomes every Dick's and Jerry's personal "God."
Matthew 7:6