What place should personal experience have in a sensible discussion about faith?
I think that you should be able to give more than personal experience if you really want to convince someone that your belief is true, if you want to convince them that they also should accept that belief. I am a Christian. I should be able to say why, and if I am in a discussion with a Muslim, I should be able to say why I am a Christian instead of a Muslim. If we both just say, "This works for me in my personal experience," then we are at a standstill.
This is not to say that personal experience is entirely beside the point or unimportant. The Christian faith - and I am assuming many other faiths as well - would put great weight on personal experience. It would be central. Christianity says that knowing Christ is the most important thing, being in a loving relationship with Christ is the most important thing. This aspect is certainly subjective, but if I am in a sensible discussion with someone checking out Christianity, I would want to talk about what it is like each day, what Christ means to me, how his Spirit helps me practically to get through. This is the good stuff.
There is more to the Christian faith than arguing with people who don't believe it. If that's all it was, it would be rather pointless. It would be like trying to convince people to enjoy a home with you that you have neglected to actually enjoy yourself. God, if he exists, is far more than someone to know true things about. He is a person, someone to enter into relationship with. As a Christian, then, my main business ought to be that relationship, and then, on occasion, I must enter into dialogue with people who don't know the power of that relationship. On those occasions, I must give reasons for the hope that is within me. Quite naturally that will involve both subjective and objective elements.
Subjectively I should be able to give a testimony of what God has done in my life and what difference he makes to my everyday life. If I am to give a reason for the hope that is within me, I can talk about reasons, but it is not beside the point to discuss the nature and quality of that hope, what it is like to have and enjoy it.
Objectively I should be able to give an intelligent response as to why I am a Christian, instead of other things. I would give arguments for the existence of God, such as the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral motions argument. And seeing the plausibility of theism, I would then argue from historical evidences for the reliability of the resurrection of Jesus.
What if my conversation partner is not persuaded? That is perfectly okay. Everyone is free to believe what they want, and I think that if God exists, he wants it that way. He does not compel belief or compel obedience, but he wants people to freely enter into that relationship with him. The Christian conception of God is not one of coercion but of love.
If my conversation partner is not persuaded, I should honestly attend to his doubts and try to examine them for myself. I should not shut myself off. But if I actually know God, that knowledge should not be dependent on whether or not there are atheists who doubt. If I know my brother, I would not find a stranger's doubts about whether I had a brother very convincing. At rock bottom I should still be able to say, "But I know him." For plenty of people, me simply saying this with conviction might be enough. And for others, I may need to take them to my facebook page and show them a picture. And for others, there may be no way to prove it to them because they think the facebook picture is faked, and even if I showed them my brother, it might just be an actor hired to play my fake brother.
There are good reasons for believing. But your presuppositions will affect the way you see the evidence. No one is neutral when they come to it. If you are firmly atheist when you start to look at the evidence for theism and Christianity, there is a pretty good chance you will remain atheist. If you are firmly Christian when you come to look at the evidence for atheism, there is a pretty good chance that you will remain Christian. That is not to say that the search is impossible or fruitless, but it is to say that we should pay attention to our presuppositions and the effect that they will likely have on our search.
In Christianity our present experience of God is subjective. God is, according to the Christian faith, a Spirit. Knowing God, then, is going to have to be different from knowing my brother. I can't put God in a test tube and hand him to you, and I can't show you a picture of him. But Christianity differs from many other religions and many other philosophies in saying that God did take on flesh and become physical, objectively entering into history. The truth of Christianity hangs upon the historical truth of the resurrection. If it could be shown that the resurrection were not true, then Christianity would be exposed for a sham. Historical investigation, then, is in order, and this is more objective than relating personal experience, but historians still cannot escape their presuppositions; they cannot escape their skin.
If you think God is possible, reading the Bible or considering the historical evidence for the resurrection will look a lot different than if you don't think God is possible.
There are other trails to chase, but I think I will end on that for now...
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