Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?

[robvalue]

Put it another way:

God has designed things so that there can only be one eventual outcome in any given situation, because he knows what that outcome will be when he designs things. He knows the eventual outcome. I don't care what it could have been, up to that point, or how many times it changes. This is irrelevant. He either knows what will happen, or he doesn't.

If you say there are actually more possibilities, but he knows which one it will be, then all the others are redundant. It doesn't matter that they "could" have happened, if he had designed it so they actually happened. They won't happen. They can't. If they did, God would be wrong about all his prior knowledge.

If any theist has a counter to the envolope scenario, I'd be interested to see it: You have a choice of two doors, red and blue, for leaving a room. I know which you will leave through, ultimately. (I'm a being capable of precognition.) I write it down and put it in an envelope, and give it to you. You put it in your pocket.

Let's say I know you'll go through the red door, so that's what it says. Can you choose to go through the blue door? Is that option actually available to you?

If it is, you'd walk through the blue door, then open the envelope to see that my prediction was wrong. But it can't be wrong, because I knew you'd go through the red door. So this cannot happen. The contents of the envelope would have to change, while you walked through the blue door. In which case, it wasn't a prediction at all. It was just me saying which door you went through, after you went through it. Or rather it's a magic piece of paper which writes down which door you just went through. Before then, it makes no difference what it says.

If I have a free choice, no one can know what I'll do before I make the choice. That's what free means. Otherwise, you may as well say a robot has free will. It has the capability to do all kinds of things, but it does what it's programmed to do. It's predictable. Did it choose to do the thing it was destined to do? God being "outside of our time" doesn't change anything. He stills knows what I'll do, before I do it, from my points of view. So I cannot choose to do otherwise. From his point of view, it's like watching a film. Or viewing every slide of a film at once.