Is Belief in God Objective or Subjective ?
I was having a debate with an atheist. According to her, beleif in GOD is subjective and gravity is objective. I said both are objective. She said I dont know the meaning of objective.
Secondly, what should be our response when someone says that intellectual evidence is no evidense and it is also subjective. Please throw some light on this.
Answer
I think that belief in God begins with a degree of subjectivity, it moves on to a level of more and more objectivity, and finally reaches a degree of certainty, not complete, but near about it. All this happens if an individual pursues his goal of knowing God sincerely.
It is neither completely correct to compare belief in God with gravity nor fully wrong. When an individual looks at objects falling on the ground instead of flying above, it is a proof of gravity. When the same person looks at manifestation of control in this world demonstrated in, for example, the extraordinary discipline in timings of the appearance of day and night, he ought to acknowledge that somebody has to be doing it. But there ends the analogy between gravity and God.
God is much more than a mere force like gravity. He feeds me, He responds to my prayers, and when I am in need, He comes to my rescue. While to know that He feeds me, I need to be both intelligent and fair, to know that He listens to my prayers and comes to my rescue in difficulties, I need to pray to Him.
I would not understand the phenomenon of gravity if I don’t apply my intellect properly to appreciate its arguments. Likewise, I would not be able to know God properly if I am unprepared to listen to the arguments leading to Him properly. I will become convinced about the existence of gravity when I will throw an object towards the sky and then watch it falling on the ground. I will be convinced about the presence of God only if I will pray to Him properly to see Him responding to it.
If you want to know something, you have to satisfy the conditions of knowing it. If you don’t want to satisfy those conditions, you are showing that you don’t want to know it.