The question isn't moot e4e. It's at the very heart of the whole debate. Without the ability to do otherwise there is no freedom and without freedom there is no responsibility for one's actions.
And I wasn't focusing on the wrong thing. You presented your wife's knowledge as being analogous to God's foreknowledge. I happen to agree that it is in fact analogous but not in the sense you are trying to make it work. God can know my actions before I make them in the exact same sense that my wife can know my future actions. She can know my actions because she knows me. But even as well as my wife knows me and my ways, she still gets it wrong sometimes because there are things which she cannot know.
It is the same with God. The only difference is two fold. First, God is far wiser than my wife and second, there is far less information that God cannot know. So with increased information and dramatically increased wisdom, God is able to know the future in much greater detail and with much better precision than is any mere man. But note that this position that I've just laid out preserves genuine freedom of choice. It does so because it allows for the fact that God created us in such a way that there are certain aspects of our will that cannot be known. That is not to say that God doesn't want to know or that if it were knowable that He couldn't figure it out but that God cannot figure it out because it is not rationally knowable.
Would you agree that God is capable of making the world in such a way? If not, please explain.
And finally, you said...
First of all I wasn't calling you a Calvinist in a pejorative way; I was simply stating the facts. Secondly, I have not assigned any traits to God that are not depicted in Scripture. You act as though we all sat around one Saturday after a football game and came up with a god we all felt like we could get along with. I can assure you that is not the case. If you can demonstrate where my beliefs are wrong by the Scripture and sound reason, I will recant them. And lastly, everything you said from "God is creator" on, I completely agree with. Does that surprise you?
Resting in Him,
Clete