But if God sets up the rules of the universe and lets people explore it on their own, then they are accountable for their own actions, even if God already knew what they would do. Unless they are automatons rather than people.

It is a mistake to assert that just because you can predict a person's actions with confidence that means that person is a machine. We predict the actions of people we know well all the time. If we met a being that was impossible to predict, most of us wouldn't feel comfortable acknowledging that entity's personhood.

The kind of things that you'll do in any given situation defines who you are as a person. Just because someone else knows you well enough to predict your actions, that doesn't make you an automaton. If it were impossible for anyone to predict your actions, that would mean that there wasn't a you deciding what actions to take, that the behavior was random.

But this is all getting off the subject. Back to the subject, what if someone is omnipotent and omniscient, but simply doesn't care what happens with humans? That person didn't create us intentionally, we're just some minor refuse caused by something else. This is the same as if there was no such person, as far as we are concerned...can atheists simply shuck responsibility for their own actions off onto the universe at large?

Um...that went in the wrong direction at several levels.

Yeah, I guess this does veer from the original topic, but freewill verus determinism is a fasinating topic to explore in fiction and in real life.

I guess it depends on how you define predictability. People I knew have shocked me, people have pleasantly surprised me. And I've shocked myself more often than pleasantly surprising myself by my own actions.

19th century scientists believed in a clockwork universe, if you knew all the positions and motions of all the particles in the universe, you could predict the future. And many theologians seemed to agree.

But human behavior is more than the result of preditable particle trajectories and under the bedrock of newtonian clockwork, there is a sea of uncertainty and mystery.

If everyone has it and can use it freely, well, its not magic.

If few people have it and can use it freely they will have to put up with the demands of those who can't and will frequently have to pick sides and live up to expectations.

In my world there are those that can do magic, they have a very small magic ability, and are then taught how to use it, especially using rote spells, very by the book. But then there are two ppl born at roughly the same time, unrelated, in different parts of the world, who have a completely natural and unlimited command of 'magic.' They can do whatever they want, with the only consequences being, for them, the results of the magic they have thought up and worked. For those who use magic more unnaturally, 'by the book,' there are also no consequences, but they have less of an impact on the world.
I'm wondering what you guys think of this. I know the school of thought where magic has consequences, but there is no draining of power, or sacrifices to use your magic. It's like your arm, or mouth, for these to special people. It doesnt require consequences of them to use at all. So any specific discussion to this would be extra helpful.
Thx..

Because if they're protagonists, then this has "linear plot" written all over it.