To what situation are you referring?
The Book of Life is already writen in God's infallable knowledge.
No argument here...
Just because you can't see it ( but God can ) dosen't make the empty seat waiting for you any less real.
Right, but because we can't see it, we don't know if there's a seat there for us or not. Because we don't have that knowledge, all decisions we make are based on our free will.
Let me explain further. Can you, or can you not, decide either to follow God or to turn away from Him? Yes, we can decide what to do. God already knows what we will choose, so He's got a place ready for us. The point is that WE choose what to do, because we don't have the knowledge that God has. If our decisions are not based on free will, then what are they based on? Certainly not on any knowledge that we don't have.
I think we are both right on this, just looking at it from two different perspectives. As you say, we don't have free will because our lives are already planned for us. You are right that our lives are already planned. However, I say that we DO have free will because we don't know what that plan is. With no knowledge of that plan, our decisions MUST be made out of free will.
One more thing. You say that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, right? Well, the Bible says that we have free will (Leviticus 1:3, 19:5, 22:19, 22:29; Ezra 7:13; Philemon 1:14), so is the Bible wrong?
... with a tip of my hat to Schrodinger's Cat
Huh?
Our decisions are based on all the learning we have, outsiders influence, logic or lack thereof, our experience,what we had for breakfast this morning, our emotional stability and a billion other things we will never know effect us...
BUT... God created all of these things exactly the way he wanted it to play out.
He had to if he knows how it will end, and he could have changed any small portion of it to change the ending.
For example, an infinitesmally small change in the design of the amount of gravity could have caused someone to trip and fall. Perhaps my grandfather would have died and I would have never been born - but GOD knew all these interactions as he designed the world -
All of my experiences, my mental states, my emotions, all the neurons in my brain at every moment of my life that effect my "free will" decisions were allready known to Him as He created the world - Every coin flip, every spin of the wheel in Vegas ( even that there would be a Vegas ) were absolutely known and approved by Him - or he would have done it differently.
What's one thing God can't do ?..... Have a surprize party !
"... with a tip of my hat to Schrodinger's Cat"
... a theory in quantum physics - states the cat can be dead and alive at the same time. might somehow be linked to "free will" , but I doubt it.