Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?

[henryp]

I know there is no difference between a human not wanting to be smashed with a hammer, and a computer not wanting to be smashed with a hammer.  But my not wanting to be smashed with a hammer trumps the knowledge that the two are the same philisophically.

You know there's no difference...but yeah, there's a difference. WTF?

Yup.  From a detached perspective, I'm no more important than a computer.  I know this.  But from my perspective, choosing between a computer and myself being smashed with a hammer matters quite a bit, because I really don't want to be smashed with a hammer.

A better way to word it maybe: There is a difference between what reality is and how we experience it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Thought problem:

All human decisions follow deterministically from the initial conditions of the universe as decided by God.
In all the possible worlds in which people could exist they would make different decisions in each of them, some better, some worse.
In no possible world can everyone always make the best possible decision.
In least one possible world, the decisions made by people are the best they could be.
God created the best possible world.

In other words, it's like that scene in the last Matrix in which Neo meets The Architect and the wall monitors show all the possible (prior) though slightly different decisions he, Neo, made, except in this case The Architect could have had complete control to make one and only one happen.

[Edwardo Piet]

I don't see what sort of conclusion you're trying to get at from that.

The way I see it if determinism is true then then at any given moment there is exactly one physically possible future. That begins at the beginning of the beginning. So it would mean we live in the best possible world. And the worst possible world. Because we'd be living in the only possible world.

(Not logically possible words, physically possible worlds).