There are different schools of thought on this. I have a few philosophy textbooks on free will from my university days, but my background was in theoretical computer science and I just look at it theoretically. The opposite of determinism is nondeterminism. If free will is to mean anything objective, it means that you cannot necessarily predict the outcome of an event if free will is involved in that event. But we already know the entire universe works that way. Determinism was debunked in the 20th century by theoretical physics.
Speaking only from experience without math to back it up- when my spirit fought to change a specific event-everything was in the event was predetermined, or I wouldn't know what was going to happen. And, in most cases, the event resisted changes, to the point that the ripple effect would reach out and touch my life.
For example, I blurted out to my HS boyfriend that he was going to die. When he asked how, my consciousness moved forward in time to show that if I told him it would be a football accident, then he would still die in another way, (car crash w/a drunken driver) only I would be there, too. Unable to tweak the event, I didn't tell him, because I wasn't ready to die, yet. But, I still felt terrible when he passed away a few months later.
A few years later, another boyfriend was cheating on me... and in despair, I asked God to show me who I was going to marry. God responded by filling me with love, warmth and what looked like sparkly stars. Then, He marked both my husbands in the same way when I first met them. However, I was having doubts about marrying my first husband, but I went through with it, because God had marked him. Does that mean God knew what I would choose (Determination) or did He actually choose for me?
And, the Grim Reaper (Death) once told me that our lives are like a vortex where we can start out making lots of decisions as kids, but eventually all our decisions would lead us down towards our demise and to him, so he could bring us through the bottom.
So, does that mean we don't feel like our decisions are pre-determined because like a rat in a cage we are incapable of determining what will happen to us, (getting fed, for example)? But, the person (reality or time itself?) feeding the rat in the cage knows when it's being done and can record everything the rat does within the cage, because it exists outside the boundries of the cage? Maybe, De ja vou is a primitive way of understanding our own pre-determined lives?
I mean, a few times my soul has been able to track people's lives from their past and forward to their demise sometimes when it entered a specific event that was happening.
I just don't know how everything adds up unless there is another force going on that we are not aware of a we live out our lives...
