Yes, I'd say it was "determined", since everything that goes on has to be a continuation of the one big effect of the big bang. To put it unpoetically, there's nothing else sticking its nose into the ever ongoing continuation. Sure, we impose local boundaries and then declare local cause and effect between some arbitrary points, but that's just zoning in on the continuation of the one big effect.
Words like 'random', 'Nothing', and 'infinite' appear in our languages, as if they can be so, but 'random' is usually taken as meaning something unpredictable rather than a mini first cause output that has no inputs, 'nothing' has no existence, and 'infinite' contradicts itself as something like a sequence or an extent that can never be attained, at least for actual infinities (potential ones are fine, such as in math). Words, though, after leaving their definitions behind, can take on a fake meaning of their own, such as 'consciousness' suddenly being able to be a thing that can float around all by itself, when it really depends on and comes from a brain process.
I think the most interesting but failing 'reach' for having free will instead of fixed will is to flip the disliked 'determined' to be 'undetermined', which is 'random', which can't help, for then the consistency of one's self is lost, plus, how does one get an output without an input, and if you could, it would beget a nightmare of nonsense even worse than we do with our brains giving inputs to actions.
We did not come into this world; we came out of it. This world was once just so much rocks and water, yet the potential for us was already there, for we eventually came forth. There are no random accidents; there is no random either. We were always going to be. There are no ‘accidents’, either. We needn't even look back in time, for we know that we'll ever see what we would call 'fortunate happenings', such as when a nervous, little shrew looked out, one day, to see that all the dinosaurs were gone, along with 95% of all life, which opened up a space for us. If the shrew could talk, he might have said, "Hurray! Now I can evolve into all the mammals!"
Conscious creatures would seem to be of nature realizing itself, or else they are just as organic as everything else, and just happened to become sentient.
I have poems and writings on LegendFire, under the name 'FireFlies'. Here's one of 12-syllable lines that won a contest there. One had to employ the phrase, "Let them eat cake". There are two voices in the poem, with one in italics.
The Impossible Recipe
Explaining the Cosmos is as easy as pie:
It’s an endless extravagance beyond the sky,
Which shows that matter’s very readily made—
Underlying energy raising the shades.
This All sounds rather like an ultimate free lunch,
For the basis is already made, with no punch,
It ever being around, as is, never a ‘was’—
Everywhere, in great abundance quite unheard of.
There’s even more of it than can be imagined—
Of lavish big spenders, there in amounts unbounded:
Bubbles of universes within pockets more,
Across all the times and spaces beyond our shore!
What is the birthing source of this tremendous weight?There is nothing from which to make the causeless cake!
Its nature is undirected, uncooked, unbaked?There can’t be a choice to that ne’er born and awaked!
There can’t be turtles on turtles all the way down;
The buck has to stop somewhere in this town.‘Nothing’ is unproductive—can’t even be meant;
All ever needed is, with nothing on it spent!
Yes, none from nothing, yet something is here, true;
But, really, you can’t have your cake and Edith, too!And yet I’ve still all of my wedding cake, I do—
It’s just changed form; what ever IS can never go.
Since there’s no point at which to impart direction
The essence would have no limited, specific,
Certain, designed, created, crafted, thought out meaning!Thus the Great IS is anything and everything!
This All is as useless as Babel’s Library
Of all possible books in all variety!Yes, and even in our own small aisle we see
Any and every manner of diversity.
The information content of Everything
Would be the same as that of Nothing!Zero. The bake’s ingredients vary widely,
And so express themselves accordingly.
What’s Everything, detailed? Length, width, depth, 4D—
Your world-line; 5th, all your probable futures;
6th, jump to any; 7th, all Big Bang starts to ends;
8th, all universes’ lines; 9th, jump to any;
10th, the IS of all possible realities.
Your elucidation is quite a piece of cake!Yo, it exceeds, as well, and so it takes the cake.
Everything ever must be, because ‘nothing’ can’t?Yes, it’s that existence has no opposite, Kant!
So, we’re here at the mouth of the horn of plenty,
For a free breakfast, lunch, and a dinner party;
Yet many starving are fed up with being unfed.Alas, for now I have to say, Let Them Eat Cake!