Sea battles

If a battle at sea happened today, then yesterday the statement was true "there will be a sea battle tomorrow." Likewise, if no battle occurred - yesterday, it was true that "there will be no sea battle tomorrow."

Will there be a sea battle tomorrow?

Aristotle and Hegel both point out that this is predicated on knowledge of the future, so the answer is that we don't know. As Hegel points out, "wisdom comes at dusk".

Suppose that nobody actually wants a battle, but the ultimate universal (divine) plan calls for one. If the divine plan requires it, then surely the will of the combatants is irrelevant and they will go out and (sadly) sink one another. If the will of the combatants overrules the plan, then there will be no battle - but the divine plan will be unfulfilled. If the divine plan involves insuring that enough participants want to fight, then is the will of the combatants truly free?

The simple logical approach is to simply say that the status of a battle tomorrow is undefined until the end of tomorrow. There is no answer, and the question of free will vs. predestination is irrelevant.

An absolute predestination view is that the answer is firmly defined, unchangeable - even if we don't actually know what it is (so we can pretend it was our idea).

A weak predestination view ("foreknowledge does not mean causality") would say that since the divine knows our hearts, it knows what we will choose - but we still make the decision. In that case, if God doesn't want a battle tomorrow, but knows that we are going to have one anyway, can he do more than sigh sadly from the heavenly grandstand?

A selective predestination view (God picks the important events only) requires that the answer be important to a divine plan. If it isn't important, then we have free will. If it is important, we don't. (What counts as important? Who knows!)