Is our destiny predetermined by God?

I often think of the multitudes who appear to have no control over the circumstances in which they are placed. Does it not look like ordination or destiny on the part of God?

If born a savage, the man has no control over that, but we cannot blame the Creator in this. When man first appeared, be the time when it may, God's Law was that he was to come on earth in the same way as other animals came by procreation.

Conception takes place and a spirit must be in that body.

There are no circumstances in which a man is placed, but he can to some extent control these, so as to better himself. 

Here is one, for example, born in a depraved community.

As a spirit, he is in a very low condition, but a far higher, nobler condition than that of the brute. He knows when he is doing wrong and doing righteously. But he goes on in the evil courses of such a community, he does not heed the inner voice warning him, checking him in his evil ways, and he becomes hardened in his iniquity.

He knows he may live a better life, and that there is room on the globe for him, that he is free to leave the society of the evil and mingle with the good, but yet he does not care.

Still, you will find even amongst such men some true, good principles, significant of something better than what appears, and I have known some of these on leaving the body become bright characters in the spirit world.

Your question is not a new one.

—Hafed, Prince of Persia