Skeptic: The only way to know if your supposed religious experience is true is according to objective evidence evaluated dispassionately without any double standards, as an outsider.
Christian: I would agree with that. But there is more to it than you imply. It is not about authenticating an abstract idea, like God exists. It is that the objective evidence is made personal by the subjective experience. The first without the second is nothing more than fodder for debate. It can never be more than that. On the other hand, the second without the first makes the personal subjective experience questionable. (I should note that even the disciples did not believe in Jesus on the basis of personal subjective experience alone. They had plenty of objective evidence.) But the two together provide more than adequate testimony for the reality to which both point.
Gary: If we were talking about the experience of coming down with the flu, then your logic would be accurate. Medical experts say that the flu virus causes fever, body aches, and lethargy. If one day you come down with these symptoms, go to the ER and test positive for the flu, then your subjective experience has confirmed the objective evidence (scientific research) about the flu. But saying that your experience of escaping death by sliding off a snowy road and and landing between two trees [this particular Christian’s “miracle” experience] has no relationship to the claim that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead and is currently living in your heart (soul). It only proves that rare, odd events happen to people. Please explain how you connect the two.
End of post.
Escaping Christian Fundamentalism 
I agree with your statement, Gary. I think the problem is one of starting points. You are coming from the starting point of a skeptic while the Christian is coming from the starting point of being a Christian. So asking the question about why he or she believes in the Christian God will usually be answered with subjective stories that can’t be substantiated with objective facts by the skeptic.
I know that you and I are currently starting an email thread and we are discussing this. So it will be interesting to see where it goes 😊.
Great thoughts, by the way.
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Hi Peter. Thanks for commenting on my blog!
Of course, anyone is free to believe whatever he or she wants to based on as much or as little evidence as they choose. However, if one is going to claim that his or her belief is a universal truth, something that is true for all people and at all times, shouldn’t we insist on better evidence than subjective personal experiences?
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“But saying that your experience of escaping death by sliding off a snowy road and and landing between two trees [this particular Christian’s “miracle” experience]…”
And how about the people whose experience is that they slid off a road, and did not escape death because they ran headlong into a tree? Their experience would confirm the opposite of a god watching over them, but they can’t tell us about their experience because they died. That’s the survivorship bias, we focus on the few who were spared, rather than the many who didn’t make it, and that skews our perception.
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Yes, it always gets me when the one person who survives a tragedy gives effusive thanks and praise on national television to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for miraculously saving him, while the other 250 people, including little children, all died horrific deaths.
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It’s more that my subjective experience conforms with the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection.
Since people experience all kinds of things, and all kinds of people claim experiences from different sources, which sources do, in fact, exist?
So someone who experiences Allah, for example, and some who experiences Jesus, and some deny any experience whatsoever – which is correct? They can’t both be correct because they are mutually exclusive.
Well, Islam denies that Jesus was crucified. Christianity lines up with all the facts available to us from 2000 years ago.
Hence my personal experience of Jesus lines up with historical fact. The others don’t.
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Exactly which historical facts are you referring to, and how do you define an historical “fact”? Is something an historical fact because you believe it to be so, because the majority of people believe it to be so, or because the majority of experts believe it to be so?
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