At this very moment in time, you can lift your right and or your left hand or both. It’s not pre determined because there is no reason for it to be so. If everything is pre determined, why even bother give the “illusion” of free will?

However, I agree with you on one point. A white cell is a white cell, it cannot be a red blood cell.. a human is a human, it cannot be a dog.. is that a very big “restriction” in your free will? :-)

However, I think we will surrender part of our free will soon. If you think about it, free will is directly linked to which “layer of logic” (as I call it) in the universe you occupy. Atoms have nearly no free will, molecules a little more, living cells a bit more still, living organisms like plants a little more, animals, more still, humans a lot more.. but as the “rules” defining “who you are” come gradually into focus, your free will starts to fade and is “displaced” upward. We are ourselves like cells inside a global organism which we cannot imagine, just like our own cells can’t imagine what it’s like to be human. However, once you surrender you free will, you are in Paradise. Imagine how the atoms composing our body must feel. In a young universe where they were “free” to bump into each other in chaotic ways, what they could experience is a million times inferior then being a part of your hand. Just moving your finger is pure Bliss for them. In no universe could they experience to “move” that way. They trade their “free will” of fighting between each other who gets to occupy a point in space (like a game of musical chairs), accept the laws of physics/chemistry which allows them to interact in harmonious ways, and in exchange they get to experience being part or so much more.. the same applies to us. We are also just fighting for money, resources, goods.. if you call that “freedom”.. but imagine what it will be like when we surrender our “free will” to something greater then us.. I would trade it in any day..

In the end, it’s the same as lightning. Imagine the point of departure in the clouds as the point from which the “first” humans departed some hundred thousand years ago, and the ground as being the unavoidable emergence of the “rules” which govern humans (like the laws of biology governing living cells). As the lightning progresses, it’s “options” or possible alternative trajectories shrink until at the end, one branch hits the ground. Free will exists between that point in the clouds and the ground. Destiny is represented by those two points. No matter what you do, you will end up hitting the ground. It’s a pre determined end result with near infinite ways to reach it. Is it so bad a deal? I find it a sweat deal. We have free will, yet we can’t screw up.. ;-)