And the Lord hardened the Pharaoh's heart

[Willum]

Exodus 7:3-4, is there any Bible verse that brings so much discontent to a believer's heart?
It destroys not only the unsubstantiated claim of free-will, but demonstrates God cruel and manipulative.

Skipping all the apologetic excuses, the Egyptians were evil, the Pharaoh was a dictator, they didn't brush their teeth after stealing all their slaves' garlic, etc., if we back it up, don't we discover that it was God, not the Pharaoh who was mistreating and harming the Jews?

Because, let's face it, the Biblical account is unlikely the first time God would have had to hardened his heart.

In all that time, couldn't God had softened the Pharaoh's heart, long before then?
In short, isn't God himself to blame for the suffering of Moses' people?

Please justify your answer with scripture.

[JehovahsWitness]

At least you are admitting that there are other gods.

Did I ever suggest otherwise?


Perhaps you missed my earlier post on the subject...
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 598#858598

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 2 by ttruscott]



[center]
Pharaoh couldn't a done it without God's heart hardening process.[/center]

You imply that the hardening of Pharaoh's heart made Pharoah do some heinous thing he did not want to do.

Oh Pharaoh NEEDED to have a hard heart in order to achieve what he wanted to do?
Thank the lord for Pharaoh's hard heart.

[Donray]

You can call them false, but you must believe they existed to be false. Otherwise you would say that no other god but your exists.

So again you are saying there are other gods that you believe false just as I believe your god false.

Your sophistry is so clumsy... a false god is a non-existent god, good grief...is English your second language...? I'll slow down...

Christians cannot agree on how gods there are. the JWs believe in a least two gods.

Who cares what they think???

Tell me since you know your god, How many innocent babies did he kill in Egypt with the ten plagues? One million? How many Jewish babies did he kill because of the plagues?

No innocents have ever suffered or died on earth.
Only sinners under judgement have ever been born as humans on earth.
Only the guilty suffer or die on earth.

Please do not define the righteousness of my GOD by of your own limitations...

If this story where true there would be no Egypt left. It would have taken hundreds of years to recover if ever.

Please do not define the power of my GOD by of your own limitations...

SO, LETS HERE HOW THIS HAPPEN ACCORDING TO YOU AND REMEMBER TO INCLUDE HOW MANY HUMANS DIED.

Oooo, how rancorous...

Only the guilty died.
Only those under judgement for their sins, died.
No innocents died.
So who cares except maybe those who are driven by their emotionalism to deny that all are sinners under judgement?

Typical Christian, just throw out insults when your have no logical response.

You do know that you gave no logical come back to my logical explanation of the ten plagues.

Your whole thing is that your god cannot do any wrong. When he murders babies that is because some fictitious Eve ate an apple.

At least explain how a day old baby is guilty of something and deserves to be murdered? Bet you cannot like you cannot logically explain anything you believe.

You are OK with babies staring to death because they are sinful according to you.

I like have you think that gods can murder anyone it must be OK because they pissed off your god.

Like I thought you are a typical person that only worship a god that says there is an afterlife. Your is always right and that is why you cannot have a logical discuss about thing like the amount of people that died because of the ten plagues.

Since you think your god did something so that Egypt recovered from the plagues in less then 500 hundred years. Can you explain what he did? Of course you will not. You are one of those that use the "God works in mysterious ways and I don't know what they are." excuses a lot. You cannot answer so your response is you don't understand your god.

[Donray]

You can call them false, but you must believe they existed to be false. Otherwise you would say that no other god but your exists.

So again you are saying there are other gods that you believe false just as I believe your god false.

Your sophistry is so clumsy... a false god is a non-existent god, good grief...is English your second language...? I'll slow down...

You are showing your ignorance. Many Roman emperies were considered gods. They are false gods but did exist. So you need to tell me how you figure that all the actual people (Pharaohs, Chinese emperors, Japanese emperors, Inca emperors, etc) did not exist and yet you would say they were false gods.

Come on, explain yourself........

[marco]

You can call them false, but you must believe they existed to be false. Otherwise you would say that no other god but your exists.

So again you are saying there are other gods that you believe false just as I believe your god false.

Your sophistry is so clumsy... a false god is a non-existent god, good grief...is English your second language...? I'll slow down...

You are showing your ignorance. Many Roman emperies were considered gods. They are false gods but did exist. So you need to tell me how you figure that all the actual people (Pharaohs, Chinese emperors, Japanese emperors, Inca emperors, etc) did not exist and yet you would say they were false gods.

Come on, explain yourself........

Moderator Comment


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Please review the Rules.


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[Justin108]

In all that time, couldn't God had softened the Pharaoh's heart, long before then? In short, isn't God himself to blame for the suffering of Moses' people?

Please justify your answer with scripture.

You imply that the hardening of Pharaoh's heart made Pharoah do some heinous thing he did not want to do. Ol' Moses was his best friend and he desperately wished well to the Israelites but that mean evil YHWH forced him to hate them and forced him to commit suicide by trying to destroy them. Pfffft.

Reading for content will dissuade you of this fallacy as there is no hint of this happening anywhere except in the minds of those prone to looking for derogatory slurs against YHWH...a knee jerk response driven by contempt.

To harden HIS heart obviously...

Oh I love it when theists do this. "This is obviously what the text means. My interpretation is obviously the correct one". Funny you should appeal to what's "obvious" in this instance when the entirety of PCE is not at all obvious. You've told us many times that the reason the "true" interpretations of the Bible are less-than-obvious is because there is some kind of hidden secret in the biblical text. Yet now all of a sudden, that conspiracy does not apply and the "true" interpretation is the "obvious" one.

My scripture support is the story itself and the revealed character of YHWH as righteous.

The revealed character of YHWH as righteous? Or the claimed character that YHWH is righteous? Having read the Bible, the authors do a great job constantly telling us how righteous God is but they never actually demonstrate it.

[OnceConvinced]

YHWH claims that weaker means non-godly... and I accept that.

Most Gods think they are superior to other gods it seems. I would hardly take any god seriously, who is haughty enough to claim they are the greatest and that all other gods are non-godly. I would see too much pride there. Too much ego.

This story in real life proved to HIS people YHWH was the only GOD and all others were false, not to be considered.

I don't see why just because God made them look weak and foolish, that suddenly means they are false gods. There are many tales of gods, some of which are more powerful than other gods.

Not in the bible.

I'm sure those who worship YHWH and see him as the top god would be sure never to include any stories in the bible where YHWH gets his butt kicked by other gods. But there was a story where YHWH was rendered impotent by iron chariots!

God also set up a test for Baal that Baal failed miserably, but is that proof that Baal was a false god? Or is it just that he was a weaker god?

YHWH proved Ba'al false in 1 Kings 18:38[

No he didn't. All he did was set up a test which Baal failed. But perhaps Baal just refused to be tested?

Even so, it does not prove Baal to be a false God, just that maybe he was weaker than YHWH.

When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!� as voiced by the Ba'alistas themselves and they died for their false god's failure.

This looks like the case of a severe lack of faith on behalf of those who worshipped Baal. It could be that Baal did not feel that he should have to come running to prove himself.

Why is it ok for YHWH to refuse to be tested but not Baal?

Perhaps those who worshipped Baal didn't die because their god was false, but because their god was furious that they dare tried to test him? So he let YHWH have his rebellious, presumptuous and weak-in-faith followers?

No such thing as a weaker true god in the Bible.

Well yeah, the bible writers wold not want anyone to believe that there were any gods mightier than theirs. They wanted only their god to be worshipped and all others to be deemed false.

I believed this pov like you have expressed that there were many gods and stronger Gods etc until I read the OT as an adult and knew from HIS pov there was ONE GOD and no weaker gods at all. So I had to choose and I chose YHWH.

I bet if you were to set up a similar test for YHWH now he would fail it.

Actually I have one right now for both Baal and YHWH. I have a raspberry cream bun sitting on my desk right now unwrapped. We can prove who the false god is right now. I challenge Baal to eat this bun and prove himself. If he does not eat it, we can deem him to be a false god...

So far the bun remains. Ok, Baal's a false God. We can show that to be true right now as the bun still remains in front of me.

Ok, now the same test for YHWH. I will give him 5 minutes to consume this bun. If he does not consume it in 5 minutes we can then proclaim him to be a false god too, just like we did Baal.

I shall await now to see whether YHWH is a false god or not.

[Willum]

At least you are admitting that there are other gods.

Did I ever suggest otherwise?


Perhaps you missed my earlier post on the subject...
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 598#858598

And I suppose, since it didn't happen, this means those Gods kicked Yahweh's tooshie? and the plagues are just "sour grapes?"

[OnceConvinced]

Ok more than 5 minutes has passed and the raspberry cream bun remains in front of me still. Uneaten. YHWH has failed the test. Now according to the story in Kings that means we can now declare that he is a false god.

What's good enough for Baal should surely be good enough for YHWH.

Ok, I'm not waiting any longer, I'm eating the bun now.

[marco]

Ok more than 5 minutes has passed and the raspberry cream bun remains in front of me still. Uneaten. YHWH has failed the test. Now according to the story in Kings that means we can now declare that he is a false god.

What's good enough for Baal should surely be good enough for YHWH.

Ok, I'm not waiting any longer, I'm eating the bun now.

You acted incorrectly, even immorally, OnceConvinced. Deuteronomy 6:16 tells us:



"Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in Massah."

You obviously forgot all about Massah (who, I believe, is in the cold, cold ground according to the song.)

Luke 4:12 has it: " And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

So it's not as if you hadn't been warned about using your raspberry bun wickedly.