[Lestat]

Hopefully, you'll have some patience for my ignnorance on this subject. I have no problem with future events being a byproduct of antecedent events. In fact, this makes perfect sense to me. But...

Are you saying that all is predetermined? Now THAT is something I can't seem to get my mind around. I guess what we're really talking about is free will here. Can you elaborate a little further on deterministic philosophy?

If I contend I can do something I don't want to do, will you contend it was inevitable I was going to do that anyway? And if I say, "AHA! I will now do what I intended to do in the first place", will you say, "See? I told you so!".

This becomes very much like the same circular reasoning used by theists. Free will can never be proven, because all one has to do is say, every event and human action was inevitable after the fact. I'm not sure this is your view, but I have problems anytime circular reasoning needs to be deployed.