If everything is pre-destined, is there a free will ?
Both can co-exist together beatifully if we can accept God's access to Time as a dimension. We need to see this from a different plane than us, then it does makes sense.
Why the usual answer falls flat
Most young people asking this have already been told “it’s a test.” That answer isn’t wrong, but delivered on its own it sounds like a door closing. It skips the part that actually does the work.
The argument, properly stated
Knowing everything and controlling everything is not the same. A Teacher might know which student will probably do better or fail in the exam but he doesnt control the student’s writing on the paper to pass or fail. In this case, there is no confusion as being the teacher he is aware of the particular student’s attention span, his class performance, his study pattern etc, and from there he can almost certainly tell about the destiny that particular student will take. In this case, the result is pre-destined but not hampering the free will of the student at all. Now if we apply the same for the omnipotent God who knew each of our single DNA pattern, would not know what results would occur to us as the questions are known because it comes from Him, hence he can precisely simulate the result beforehand knowing all the parameters. Yet in each occasion, a particular person would excercise his freedom to do anything at his will. The above is using human’s simple logic, lets go a bit deeper and include other dimensions into the mix. If an ant travels from one corner of a room to the opposite corner of the room following the edges only, it needs to travel the maximum distance of length, width and height. But if a fly moves from that same corner to the opposite, it can just fly across the room and the distance is greatly reduced. Now add a 4th dimension time here, if the creature can also move through time at its will, it can just cross the time and to an observer who sees the time like a flowing river will see the creature just moved instantly. Now this example tells, if a being have access to higher dimensions it can potentially reduce the distance. Lets apply the same logic to The Omnipotent God who created time and has access to infinite dimensions, wont He sees everything, knows everything all at once. However, we, the 3 dimenstional beings will see it happen in a series of events. So we do things and can see its result but for God, its all simultaneous.
Where this argument stops
This argument considers God is omnipotent who has access to all things, He sees everything. Well, logically we can’t deny or testify this fact as our reach is not there. Hence its called belief; a deliberate choice. So If I chose to believe in God’s own description, we can explain the free will and pre-destination. But if we dont settle on, what’s His true essence, then we can conclude to anything.