I completely disagree with either extreme. I am looking at this from a religious perspective, and operating under certain assumptions. !. God knows everything. 2. God created everything specifically and in detail.

Who you are and what you go through dictates every choice you will make in your life, right? And who you are is dependent on three things, your mind, your soul, and either the Holy spirit or Satan, depending on weather or not you are a Christian. God created your physical mind, and put each atom specifically in place. He understood what each atom's effects would be when he put them in place. God is the Holy spirit, and he created both our souls and Satan, giving him complete understanding of all three.

These three things combined decide what your choices will be.
My theory is that by creating everything and setting it in motion with a knowledge of what it would do and affect, he decided what that creation would do. It is like if you created a robot with a computer mind and set up a system of code to make it do and think a certain thing. If you understood the code when you created it, then you decided what it would do.

This leads many people to the conclusion that it doesn't matter what they do. This is not only dangerous, but false. Just because God created you to do something, It is no less your choice. God did not take over your brain and make you do something out of character last time you made a decision, and why would he need to? Your choices are still entirely based on who you are and will have the same consequences. If you told the robot you created to kill people as long as it can, Just because you told it to does not mean that robot did not kill someone. Also, that robot must be destroyed or somehow prevented from killing people even though it was made to decide to kill people.

If anyone has any questions or arguments about or against this, please voice them and I will respond as best I can. God bless you all.

Ah HA! Now you're getting to the interesting part. Why are some chosen and others not? Well, and this is the part that rankles people, because our society (well, except for Welfare) teaches us you have to earn what you get, right?... The Bible says God chooses whom He chooses, not based on what we've done, but purely by His pleasure.

Read what Paul has to say:
"Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger." Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."" (Romans 9:10-13)

Before they were born... Much as He chooses us in election before we are born. But what about those who aren't chosen? Paul goes on to say:
"What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For He says to Moses,
"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden.

One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists His will?" But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' " Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath—prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory— even us, whom He also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As He says in Hosea:
"I will call them 'My people' who are not My people;
and I will call her 'My loved one' who is not My loved one," and,
"It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them,
'You are not My people,'
they will be called 'sons of the living God.' " (Romans 9:14-26)