Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?

[robvalue]

I'm saying that free will, at best, appears to be the result of randomness. The rest is all abstractions we build up for convenience. This is my layman's understanding. Of course, this is very much a work in progress. The brain/mind is one of the hardest things to understand, I'm sure.

So calling the result of randomness a "choice" doesn't seem to fit; although there may well have been genuine alternative "choices". We stumble across the idea of "self", which is again a useful abstraction and not particularly scientific.

I'm talking only scientifically, not morally. There's no use trying to have a debate about what we should and shouldn't do on the premise that free will is meaningless. That's contradictory. So we assume it means something before we start.

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Which means that you don't actually exist as an autonomous being and so you have no rights.

Sure, you are just a self-aware cause and effect machine.

Have no rights? What does that mean, and how does it follow?

As I have noted, human morality is out the window. Everyone else loses their ability to choose also. So any argument of what people should and shouldn't do to each other becomes moot.