Determinism vs Education

[HappySkeptic]

Determinism means Sally will always choose the fork to the left  even if she is educated on the option of the fork to the right.

Sally is a theist. At some point, she encounters Bobby who educates her on atheism and supposedly reveals a fork to the right. Unless the fork is already flagged as deterministic for Sally, she will always remain on the theistic path despite now being educated.

This determinism also means that god cannot exist, for theists believe contrary to the logic of determinism that everyone has a choice in the matter of believing in god's existence. But determinism informs us that the atheist will always go down the determined path of non-belief despite being educated on the concept of god.

Discuss.

As mentioned by others, your argument is not sound.  You are describing fatalism.

Determinism simply says that everything is caused by prior events.  Your "education" idea would then be a cause of someone "choosing" the left or right path.  Of course, with determinism, there is only the illusion of choice, but that illusion can't be distinguished from actual choice, given the complex re-entrant operation of the brain.

If our fate is already written (unchangeable), then God does have a problem -- either:

1. free-will exists to a degree, but God forces events toward a path, regardless of our free will (i.e. he intervenes and tricks us toward a certain direction, knowing how we will likely react). This is only a type of "soft fate", and not really unchangeable.
   
2. free-will exists, but God sees all of time as one complete thing, and sees how things will end. This puts a huge constraint on God to either stay outside of time and space (i.e. not interact at all with creation), or to be a part of that completeness and have no choice in His actions (i.e. we have free will but He doesn't).
   
3. free-will does not exist (determinism), but the information regarding our ultimate fate must not enter the current universe by any means (even by God), or else that fate will change -- or else, simlar to 2), God is the ultimate puppet of determinism and is forced to act in certain ways in order to be part of that determined end (like Dr. Manhattan?).
   

My understanding of Quantum Mechanics is that there is randomness which precludes determinism (and our fate is not written), but I am fine with determinism as well.  Free will may be an illusion, but it works -- the computation system of our brain does actually make decisions that help us in survival, and will allow us to choose the left or right path.

Your OP is invalid, because natural determinism can exist and an intervening God can exist, provided an unchangeable fate does not exist. Unchangeable fate would require that God knows what God is going to do in advance, making God into a contradiction or a mindless automaton. Instead of fate, there would be "God's will". God could bring about God's will through intervention.