A Contradiction of Coercions Can We Have a Christian Explaination?

[Randy Carson]

If this is true, Jenny, then Jaonah already knew that God existed. Jonah had prior experience of God's intervention in his life. So, God wasn't coercing Jonah into BELIEVING that He existed...God was simply having trouble getting Jonah to obey Him! I could probably make a similar case for a number of the examples you cite above.

This is the sort of mental backflip I've come to expect from someone trying to fit all these contradictions together. I feel bad for you in your impossible task.

Ahhh....poor thing...I feel so bad for you you...it's sad really...you poor dear.

Spare me the sarcasm, okay, pal. You can stick it in your ear.

You've already agreed that God revealing himself with more proof would be coercion, and that this is NOT a straw man of your beliefs. But when refuting Jenny's point on the coercion in Jonah's story you say

Jonah had prior experience of God's intervention in his life.

Here, God is doing something that WLC et al say "He" doesn't do, because it would be coercion. Something you agreed with.

When you say God wasn't forcing Jonah into believing him, he was trying to get Jonah to obey him, your reasoning was that God had already forced him into believing him prior to the story Jenny brought up.

Let me clarify, and I should have spoken to this previously.

It is correct to say that God is VERY gentle with regard to His revealing of Himself normatively. But it is not absolutely the case that He does not intervene more overtly when His plan necessitates doing so. Obvious examples include Abraham, Moses, a whole bunch of prophets, David, Mary, Peter, Paul...right on through history when we might say that God intervened more dramatically in the lives of the children at Fatima, Billy Graham and many, many others.

However, when you consider that Adam and Eve "walked with God" in the Garden of Eden (and this is metaphorical), we learn that God originally intended a much closer relationship with man than we currently experience.

As for the specifics of Jonah, you can argue that God FORCED Jonah to believe in him (if this helps you to continue denying God's goodness), but I read it as God doing a GOOD thing by saving Jonah's life.