Do you guys believe in god?

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Then I am not responsible for any of my actions & am free to live my life without any guilt what so ever

The God of the bible knows all our thoughts and actions, but has given us free will to choose right and wrong, good and evil. So according to the bible, we can do whatever we want - but not without consequences.

That's a different understanding than I've gotten from reading the book.
Which is that God has the power and ability to that and yet has chosen not to except in a few rare instances.

I believe that because of this verse:

So that's predestination. You cant be in control of anything or have any free will if everything is predestined.

Also the stuff where Pharoah's thoughts and emotions were under God's control to make all the plagues happen and not let Moses+the Israelites go.

It's a bit spooky

This article and its reference verses pretty well covers my understanding of predestination,
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/chris ... ation.html

...

Yeah that article mentions other predestination verses. If Christians are predestined then I believe everyone else is too. Judas was going to betray Jesus no matter what. The pieces of silver and the potter's field are in the old testament as a prediction.

Note that through Exodus chapters 7, 8, and 9, Pharaoh hardens his own heart until 9:12 says,

12, But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh ...

A few examples of Pharaoh hardening his own heart prior to that being;
9:7, But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened [his mind was set] and he did not let the people go.
8:32, But Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also ...
8:15, But when Pharaoh saw there was respite he hardened his heart ...

What happened was there was a chain of Pharaoh hardening his own heart and then God eventually said, "Oh, so you want to harden your heart? Fine, then I'll really give you what have repeatedly shown you want ..."

And with God being infinite and eternal He knew from time before time that was what Pharaoh was going to do and what, He, God, was going to do about it.
Which connects to where we finite mortal humans have some difficulty wrapping our finite mortal minds around things such as the infinite eternal God knowing from the infinite past what free-will choices we were going to make and how that interacted with his desires for what he would like us to do and with what things he in fact sometimes prods us toward doing in cases where that suits his purposes.

So, yes, it is a question; what in a given situation at a given moment, is the specific relationship between our own individual free will and God's sovereign power and control, over, well, everything, apparently including even our free will?

Am I free to reject the opportunity to say anything in support of God here, or am I God's remote control toy?
Am I free to decide, okay, I'll say something in support of God here, but screw what God is prompting me to say, I'm gonna say what I myself want to say?
Am I free to reach a point where I sense God prompting me to stop talking and then make my own decision to keep right on running my mouth or does God tweak his remote control unit and make me deny his own prompting for me to stop now?

The book of Jonah ... people typically focus on the fish thing while the reason the fish thing happens is rooted in Jonah's racism.

And it shows some of the interaction between a human's free will and God's sovereign will for that human.

God wants to move to lead the people of Nineveh to repent and be saved.
God wants to use Jonah as the messenger.
Jonah says, Nice try, God, I don't want them saved, I'm outta here.
God says, Jonah my man, you have personal issues which need fixing so I'm going to push you in to doing what I want you to do AND in to facing your personal issues.

Jonah eventually and apparently quite reluctantly gave the salvation message God wanted him to give the people of Nineveh but in a sad bit of irony, while the godless pagans repented and were saved, arrogant and racist Jonah son of Amittai, who is referred to as God's servant in 2nd Kings 14, is not recorded as having himself repented of his own specific sins which were put on display in this event.
Which makes Jonah yet another person who shows that even the people God uses and calls His servants, are inherently sinful and need salvation.

Lots of the Christians I've known & went to school with(I went to a Catholic high-school) talk about hell like it's eternal damnation for doing whatever that group does not like. But if everything is predestined, the very existence of hell as a potential punishment for doing wrong makes NO sense what so ever to me. Why the hell would any loving god create a hell & then threaten hell as a punishment when people are predestined to go there. That god is evil & I want NO part of his enteral blessing

A Spinoza Atheist. I don't believe that there is a knowable god.

My mom, my NT sister, and I have been Catholic all our lives.

However, the late patriarch of the family (he passed in 2002 at the age of 43) did not believe in God.

I don't know if this is true or not, but upon enlisting in the US Army after he graduated from high school in 1978,
his first station was Jonestown. When he saw the horrors of Jonestown, he lost his faith. Afterwards, he was reassigned to South Korea, then to Central America.

Whenever the three of us went to church, fellow members often treated us awfully
as if we were threats to our church's well-being.

One example: "Hey, where's your dad?!"

There are, what, three thousand or so gods that various cultures and people around the world believe in?

Which one or ones are you talking about, and why that one (or those ones) in particular over any other one?

Let's face it, if you believe in only one of them, then you still don't believe in 2,999 of them. That's 99.97% atheism right there.

No. I lost faith a long time ago.

Not an atheist anymore, though.

People do tend to go with the god(s) that their family or overarching culture believes in. It can be rather ethnocentric. If one happened to be born in a family or culture that worships a different deity, the person would most likely worship it with the same (or a similar amount of) reverence.

That's a good point, God hardened Pharaoh's heart. But at the same time if God was controlling us all the time, then we would be doing everything in accordance with God's will. No one would be lying, stealing, harming, killing etc.