Everyone's name was written in the book of life...we're all God's creations...he gave us life and recorded it.
Even if that's the case, it still has considerable implications for free choice. Were your parents free to get together and copulate so that you may be conceived and born, if your name was written in the book of life at the foundation of the world? After all, if they didn't get together at just the right time, you would have never been conceived. Were they free to get together if you were predestined to be born?
God's knowledge of our choices doesn't negate our ability to choose nor does it mean he chose for us...it just means he already knows.
If you really believe this, then you don't believe in free will. You believe in the
illusion of free will. If there's only the illusion of free will, you aren't making choices - you're just following a script.
God orchestrated and recorded life, he predestined his will through Christ, but he didn't predestine his creation to choose one way or the other...that would be a lack of free will.
So were your parents free to not get together on that fateful night? Remember that either your name was written in the book of life at the foundation of the world or it wasn't.
Why it's all that surprising that our finite, human abilities render limited philosophical conclusions in comparison to divine perception is what confuses me.
I'm not surprised. What's surprising is your willingness to accept such a "divine perception" which turns everything on its head: able to know what you'll do, before you do it, without affecting your freedom to actually choose what to do.
Why the "ridiculous and laborious process"? Given the notion of a laborious process it's hard to deny we aren't allowed ample time to make a choice, but considered within the scope of a timeless, all-powerful creator I see the labor aspect dissolve and the ridiculousness transitioned into divine order (on a scale we can't fully grasp).
Why even have a process at all? If God knows who will choose what, what's the point in even creating those who will choose wrong and will "fail" the test?
So often it comes down to our finite perceptions within the scope of time and God's divine, infinite perceptions in a state of timelessness or transcendence beyond the expanse of time. Atheists and agnostics fully-informed of God and his will for us often make the choice to dismiss God as nonsense; it's unfortunate, but it happens.
Revelation 13:8 New King James Version (NKJV)
All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
This, to me, very clearly states that all whose names have not been
written in the Book of Life will not worship the Christian God. So, are those people free to repent and accept Jesus? After all, remember, their names aren't just "blotted" from the book of life. From the above it's crystal clear that they
aren't in the Book of Life.
Revelation 17:8 New King James Version (NKJV)
The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.[a]
Again, this says that the names of some people weren't written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world. So can those people repent and accept Jesus and be saved, even though their name wasn't added in the Book of Life at the time of the foundation of the world?