Free will vs Omniscience

Why on earth do you think such silly crapola is cute?

Since you're wrong about practically everything, I'll take that as a compliment.

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We understand that God's causing Pharoah to commit the sin of hardening his heart against the Israelites was not His committing the sin Himself.

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Strictly speaking Exodus says that God hardened Pharoah’s heart (eg Exodus 7:13). So if hardening Pharoah’s heart was a sin (your idea, not mine), God committed it.

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He's the source of power for everything we do but He doesn't share in our motivations.

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Giving us the power to do something is not the same as manipulating us into doing it. And since when were motivations sufficient to justify a sinful act ?More importantly this does not address the real points at all.Let us start with the basic problem.Exodus has God say that he will directly intervene to change the Pharaoh’s state of mind (eg Exodus 7:3) and has God doing so (eg Exodus 7:13). You assert that this is identical to the Pharaoh hardening his own heart.However, even under Calvinistic views the presence or absence of direct intervention would seem to be a difference, and even if you were to hold that it was not there is no reason to deny the presence of direct intervention (which mKes the whole point moot).I submit then that the lack of understanding is clearly yours.

It also says Pharoah hardened his own heart. Reading it intelligently leads to the understanding that both are true and equivalent in meaning. God manipulates nothing. When Pharoah changes his attitude he does it himself and God does it, both. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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It also says Pharoah hardened his own heart.

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By memory it never says both for the same event. If you disagree, please cite the relevant verse(s). There is no problem with the idea that sometimes God did it and sometimes the Pharaoh did it himself.

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Reading it intelligently leads to the understanding that both are true and equivalent in meaning.

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You have a very strange idea of intelligence.

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God manipulates nothing.

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Which - according to you - is the same as saying that God manipulates all our choices.

Doesn't need to be the same event.

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Doesn't need to be the same event

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It certainly does need to be if your argument has any hope of success. If you don’t even understand that different events can play out differently you have a serious mental problem.Try this, if you flip a coin once and it comes up heads, flip it again and it comes up tails does that prove that heads and tails are the same ?

For the same reason that He doesn't make you believe in or worship Him.If you or I were the only people at an event with money, it would not necessarily mean that we had a responsibility to use it on others. While it would be nice and expected, it should never be mandated.If a Doctor is at a football game, it may be expected for him to offer his services and training if a call went out for a Doctor in the house. The Doctor, however, makes the decision whether to help or not.If a Deity exists who claims to be all-powerful, it would be nice and expected (by humans) for such a Deity to be useful to us. The fact is, however, it is up to the deity...not the audience. It is always up to the individual...society never should have the power to mandate our help nor corral our resources for their collective benefit.Besides...the bottom line is that God and only God decides such matters.You, of course, are free to reject the idea or reality of such a God, should One exist. You don't know all of the facts, however. Perhaps God has better reasons why NOT to help.

Yes it would. Jesus said so. We've been through this before. That makes Him evil. That's your favorite copout. But you don't have all of the facts either. You're just making excuses for your pathetic god.

No it does not need to be the same event. God hardened Pharoah's heart and Pharoah hardened his own heart. Same thing.

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No it does not need to be the same event. God hardened Pharoah's heart and Pharoah hardened his own heart. Same thing.

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Then please explain your reasoning. How does the fact that at one or two points in the story the Pharoah hardened his own heart instead of God hardening it, as in the other cases, show that they are the same thing?

Nothing to show, we know it because we understand how scripture is to be read.

im not looking at the story right now, but common sense tells me that Pharoah resisted God and thus hardened his own heart. God caused it to be hardened in response to Pharoahs free-willed resistance to Gods influence. Does that make any sense in context? Its what usually happens to people...

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im not looking at the story right now, but common sense tells me that Pharoah resisted God and thus hardened his own heart.

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What you think the story ought to say and what it does say are two different things. As I pointed out to Faith the story explicitly claims that God said he would harden the Pharaoh’s heart and explicitly says that he did so on most of the occasions.

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God caused it to be hardened in response to Pharoahs free-willed resistance to Gods influence. Does that make any sense in context?

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No. The point is the reason for the Pharaoh’s decisions - God wanted the Pharaoh to refuse to let the Israelites go (because then he had a pretext for sending the next Plague). If the Pharaoh hardens his own heart sufficiently to push the decision the way God wants then there is no need for God to actively intervene.

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Its what usually happens to people...

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God manipulating them into doing bad things so he can punish them ? That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that most Christians would consider normal. It’s not the sort of thing that any rational person considers to be good.

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Nothing to show, we know it because we understand how scripture is to be read.

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In other words you get to rewrite the Bible whenever you want so long as you lit to cover it up. And they don’t even have to be good lies. Just another example of Biblical Inerrancy in action.