I can liken it to our first birth. We could not refuse that .
God ordained the time and boundaries of our birth and we had no choice in the event.
I believe it was a gift of God that I was born in the USA and not Iraq.
Of course the gift of your birth talents can be refused--not at the time of birth but when one develops the ability to choose (age of reason or age of accountability.
No, you had no choice with regard to the time or place of your birth or who your parents were, at the time of your birth. But we who believe in free will don't claim that people come into the world capable of free choice. We claim that one has to have knowledge of right and wrong before one can have free choice. That comes at the age of 3 or 4 or 7 or 8 or whenever. At that point one has the choice of accepting one's parents, one's talents etc. Initially one doesn't understand that one has talents or even that one has a choice with regard to accepting one's parents. But as one develops, one realizes that one either loves of rejects one's parents. Most people accept but some reject and that's called alienation or dysfunction. And likewise one realizes, as one gains reasoning ability, that one has talents--at which point one can accept or reject them.
Note carefully what a talent is--it is an ability. And able-to-do something. Ref-using to do what the talent en-ables one to do is refusing the talent. Talents are nothing if not exercised. So whatever talents you were born with are meaningless until you exercise them, which you do as you grow and develop. And birth-talents are only a part of one's mature abilities--much of an artist's or a mechanic's talents have to do with the way his parents and teachers teaching and training of him(with his co-operation--he could have refused to be taught). With each tiny step in development he has a choice to cooperate, exerciese his talent or ability or ableness or not to exercise it. He "has" his talents/abilities only insofar as he uses them. And he can ref-use their use, ref-use his talents at each stage in their development, to the degree he understands that he "has" them.
Do you people ever stop to think through what you write? A woman is born with artistic talent. Her parents can refuse that gift for her if they don't raise her to recognize and develop her talents. She can refuse the gift by sitting around smoking pot and fornicating instead of developing her talent. What do you think the poor wretch in the parable was doing when he buried his talent in the ground instead of using it if he was not ref-using it? Did you ever think that ref-use comes from non-use?
Your denials of free will are so utterly at odds with all of our human experience. They simply make no sense at all. The very language you use to deny free will proves the existence of free will as I've pointed out to HarveyD a half-dozen times on this thread. Every breath you guys take, every act you do proves the truth of our free-will position, but you stubbornly insist that you don't act freely but that God imposes his will against your will.
Can't you see that your very stubbornness, your very ref-usal to believe in free will is a crystal clear example of your employing of free will? The truth is obvious to just about everyone else and when presented with the truth you freely choose not to believe it.
I know, I know, you would say that God keeps you from believing it.
Have it your way (have it by your choosing act)--you are free to believe what you believe, even if in believing what you believe you put the lie to what you believe. Everyone else chooses to believe in free choice to believe, you choose to believe that your belief comes to you from outside and against your free choice.