[Neil Lynch (OP)]

   I recently wrote a novel on ending the ecocide where the protagonist (myself) is torn by the concepts of fate and free will.  As more and more I've come to reject the latter in favour of the former.  The way I see it:

   The universe exploded into being, giving rise to the solar system and earth.
   Life arose, probably something like in the manner proposed by Dawkins in The Extended Phenotype / The Blind Watchmaker (I forget which) and then evolved as per classic Darwin / The Selfish Gene logic.
   Wegener's plate tectonics were always going to see continents drifting as appears to be universally accepted.
   The expansion of the universe saw an asteroid head in our direction that smashed into the Yucatan and rather fortuitously for us led to the demise of the dinosaurs.  Opening up all kinds of doors, so to speak.
   Simian ancestors jumped around in trees.  Escaping from threats (interspecific / intraspecific) in the complex 3D environment that an arboreal lifestyle presents - where one foul move could see death / major injury (tantamount to death) result - was always going to see great senses develop in tandem with a brain suited for memory retrieval / planning / eye-limb co-ordination and so much more.  Nature is after all very much blood-red in tooth and claw!
   Climate change saw the forests open up creating savanna and so there were opportunities for a flexible bipedal ape.
   The smell of meat cooking in forest fires started by lightning strikes etc and the salivation reflex gave more recent ancestors the spark of inspiration that led to the control of fire.  We could get more creative with our diet and stay warm in cold weather.
   With our hands freed from locomotion usage, our great minds dreamt up ever-more complex tool use.
   Co-operation with conspecifics aided survival and so we became increasingly social.
   Agriculture followed as did the domestication of animal species we saw to be potentially useful.  Dogs for protection, beasts of burden for tilling fields of crops.
   Just as lots of other species (all?) exhibit greed where resources essential to life are concerned, so too did we.  Was capitalism not inevitable?
   To control people, to exploit people, religion was seen to be a great idea.  It promoted population increase whilst it also offered an explanation for how it was that we were to take control of the planet as the dominant species.
   We continued to progress through the ages, focussing on education and enlightenment.
   Naturally, we couldn't control our animal instinct to fight among ourselves, ushering in WAR.
   Religion saw the abstract concepts of free will, heaven and hell take hold.  Do what society deems to be 'wrong' and you might just end up in hell on your passing.  In life, make enough waves with the wrong people and there was incarceration.  A dirty business inherently tied to the notion we are all fully in control of our actions.  At least, sane individuals are.
   We progressed and chased ever-more elaborate dreams. 
   We had desires for bigger and better accommodation, urban living and all the mod con trappings of wealth / luxury items our little hearts could ever wish for.
   And so we wage war on nature, too.  With not all of it, at least, being 100% intentional.
   We got so full of ourselves, the ecocide was to ensue.

   Bringing us nicely to the present day.  And was it not ALL fated?

   I just see no place for 'free will' if there's no 'God' and therefore it wasn't god-given.  After all, many do believe God to be illogical and impossible.  The brain selectively ignores / remembers / forgets things and through a lifetime of experience, we do unconsciously all that we were always going to do.  There's no recognised 'free will' centre in the brain.  There's not even a credible - at least to my knowledge - understanding of which animals possess free will (if indeed any non-humans do) and when it arises in a human's lifetime.  Does a human diploid zygote have free will?  A foetus?  A baby?  An infant?  An adolescent?  Where in the seven ages of man exactly does it pop up?  Does it come fully functioning or gradually develop?
   Just as I'm not at all comfortable with the concept of free will these days, I'm also beginning to question Darwinian natural selection.  Were we fated to evolve?  Could 'random' get any woolier?  Could extra-terrestrial intelligent life exist elsewhere that doesn't possess pretty much every impressive characteristic found in Homo sapiens suite (a naked ape, good with its hands and reasoning that to varying degrees of success learnt to live together)?  Alas, a subject for another day, maybe.
   I say we're fated to some day address the ecocide sufficiently well (at least to prevent our own imminent extinction) but in my novel I do claim it might just require 8 billion good folk to read my attempt at fiction with its existential focus.    And a whole load of positive mental attitude. 
   We just first have to make a dent in the ecocide, don't we?  And soon.  Those oceans are hardly invincible.  And midnight's drawing close.

[alancalverd]

It all depends on which end of the telescope you are looking through, and in which direction.

I am a Cretaceous dinosaur, happily munching  the latest generation of plants in my comfortable swamp and thinking "Obviously fate has determined that we should have evolved from the primordial slime via those crude Jurassic forebears into these ultimate embodiments of the Creator's  dream. Future generations will surely look just like us and dominate the planet. What's that in the sky? Oh sh1t."

[Zer0]

Very good, Alan, I like it!   
Yeah!
Good Job.

If you had all the data in the universe…
Where would you Store it, outside the Universe?

Every location, mass, energy, velocity, direction of movement of every elementary particle (and whatnot)…
Even Quantum & Virtual Particles?

Every memory of every organism, every mental state, every motivation and every medication…
Every communication…
No Privacy Laws?
Some folks have Monsters & Demons you might Never wanna know about.

Would you not be able to make an accurate forecast as to the state of the universe, say, in one second henceforth?
Let's just wildly speculate & assume We could do that, Predict Everything!
Would We still be able to Break Free from a Deterministic path of Fate?
Won't it be a bit like Fate made Us predict our Fate so that We could change our Fate which ultimately led Us to our Fate?

I can't get away from the universe being completely deterministic in its entirety.  It makes no sense any other way.
Maybe you were Never meant to Get Away from it.
Perhaps, it was Never Meant to make any Sense.

And I don't think it would be the worst thing in the world if we all accepted it. 
Accepted what?
Our FATE?
Do WE have a Choice?
Won't having a Choice be contradictory & in direct conflict with Fate?

Particularly, if we want to postpone the extinction for a fair few millennia minimum.
Just because the Sun keeps coming to work on time on a daily basis, We cannot assume it will come to work tomorrow.
AWOL!

  Maybe we will some day leave the cradle and settle on new worlds but Elon Musk's plans (for instance) do disappoint me.  Indulge in space travel more when we've got the ecocide under control and not in desperation to escape a dying planet.
It's Wise to Not keep All your Eggs in the Same Basket.
Especially when Knowing a Bully named Cosmos keeps flinging a few pebbles at them, Every Now & Then.

And hopefully that's what we're fated to do.
When Fate exists, Hopes & Dreams go Extinct.

Though I doubt we'll ever get the innings those terrible reptiles got to enjoy.
Life is Not measured by the Number of Breaths we take, but by the Moments that take our Breath Away!
(Maya)

On behalf of Most of US, Welcome to the TNS Forum.
(don't thank me...bcoz...it was FATE)

[alancalverd]

Obviously we all have a fate - we will die. And we live under all sorts of external constraints. But it is up to us to determine our internal constraints and how we will act within both.