I have not read the Quran but I am in the process of reading The Holy Bible. I am also planning to read Homer's masterpieces soon. I am not reading these books for the sake of argument, I am reading them as I am truly interested in religion. Not in believing in it, but in understanding it. I believe the history of religion tells a great deal about "The Human Condition".

That said, one does not need to have read any scriptures to argue for or against religions. Understanding religion can come from a wide array of sources. Newspaper, opinion pieces, blogs, talking to people, and, of course, thinking. My ideas so far are formed from what religions have done and what ideologies they stand for, as well as how they stand up against science and reasoning. I can elaborate on this if you like, but only if you will read it, as it will be rather lengthy.

Hence, not having read scriptures does not make ones opinions biased. It could be, but not necessarily, as like I said before, understanding religion can come from many different sources.
I find this ironic. Don't take offence. Maybe it is just a misunderstanding. But if one cannot define God, how is one suppose to understand God? Subsequently, without understanding God, how does one know that God "purposefully make us doubt of his existence?" That, to me, seems like putting words in God's mouth (if he has one). And I know if I'm God I wouldn't like that.

To me that is pure speculation.
Don't get me wrong, if religion makes you happy, stick with it. However, why does a failure have to be attributed to God? Why can't we realise that we made a mistake and rectifying that mistake will put us in better stead for the future? Your rationale is not far from -- blaming God for your failures.

Personally, I don't see "thinking what you did sucked" as a bad thing, as long as you do not repeat the same mistakes. To the contrary, if you attribute your failure to God, and fail to recognise your mistakes, you will no doubt fail again.

To put it bluntly, I see this as human's ego being unable to accept failure and hence push it onto someone else, in this case, a supernatural entity. Humans, after all, are famous for their blame game.
Not a small matter, it is disrespectful to mutilate someone's name. FYI, 'k' and 'x' are pretty far apart. Don't seem like a typo.

If you want to report, go ahead. But to make sense of doing that, you would have to report the post he quoted too, as he was merely saying the opposite of what that post said, which it seems, was a post of yours. Your choice.

Close mindedness is when someone refuses to learn something altogether. I would think anyone reading these posts wouldn't be close minded. A denialist, maybe.

i don't ask for agreement in statement, there are way too many philosophy that none of it would share the same outcome. Open minded-ness is a behaviour of which a person would be able to comprehend all information and giving away satisfactory information to others. Open Minded-ness does not exist, because when you are in belief and believes, whether in yourself or other being. you are implying a mind-thinking attitude of one persona, when it was restricted. It was never open.

Science is there for a reason, its to provide truth that god is exist, not contradicting his existence. Atoms vibrate, but what make the atoms vibrate, far too many factorial including the universe movement, then come the next question... What moves the universe? people able to gave conceptual ideas of the how universe moves then come again a new question, how, where and when does the universe start to move? what trigger the movement? It come back to the basic of how Atoms vibrate... but what created the Atoms?

Human can only Question and Answer question made by their own, but they can't never question basic of basics.

No no, I'll do it in a post, but not this one. And since it seems we are going a little off topic here, as this is about God, and that is about religion, I'll post it in the "All About Religion" thread. Check there.

As for bias, I don't think the comparison is accurate. If you have not tasted the food, you certainly should not comment on the taste of the food, but if you have seen it, commenting on its aesthetics is fine. Religion is completely different. You can read food reviews, but it still wouldn't beat tasting the food first hand. However, in religion, there is no hard and fast rule as to what it really is. The Bible itself has several hundred different interpretations. Same for the Quran and other scriptures. Some say they should be taken literally, some say metaphorically, some say it is entirely up to the individual. They are often contradictory to one another.

Therefore, one can say that religions are much more complex than "the taste of food." Hence, it is not uncommon for an individual to be against certain aspects of religion, but not entirely. I, for example, mainly oppose religion because it undermines rationality. That means, I do not oppose someone visiting church for its socialising aspect, but I do oppose someone who thinks that by visiting the church, God will "take care of them." I know what rationality is, I have a fair understanding of science, and I have seen how religions have opposed certain aspects of science. So, I don't see how not having read the Bible will make my stance on rationality biased. If your argument is to hold, believers would have a VERY biased view too if they don't understand rationality. Which means, even if my views are biased, it would be no more biased, in fact far less, than those arguing against me.

Furthermore, many illiterate people are believers. And many Christians have not read the Bible even once. It shows that reading scriptures is not essential to understanding religions.

So once again, if you are arguing without any understanding of religions, yes, it would be biased. But not having read scriptures does not equal no understanding of religion.
(This does not mean I fully understand religions, or I wouldn't be here!)

And also, debating is a good way of furthering one's understanding of the topic. It allows one to realise flaws in their own arguments, and to rethink them. Hence full understanding is not essential at all!

Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll check it out.

Hang on, I am not rejecting scriptures! I wouldn't attempt to read them otherwise. What I was saying is scriptures are not the only source of information about religion. Before Christianity and Islam (Judaism etc as well), there were many other religions. Not all of them had scriptures. If scriptures are the only source of information, why do people preach?

I am not saying it isn't essential just because there are illiterate believers. What I'm saying is, if there are illiterate believers, it means understanding religion can happen through means other than scriptures. Unless you are telling me all illiterates have misunderstood their religion.

The "wronger" line was perhaps a little out of place. It was meant to ask, why do you single out non-believers for being bias but not believers?

In the end of the day, I'd say it depends on how you define bias. If you expect someone to have 100% understanding of both sides, it would be impossible, and it would be pointless debating him/her. After all, debating is suppose to raise questions we previously have not thought about. And as I believe I have enough knowledge of religious believes, perhaps more than some believers themselves (note: "some" does not equal "most", or, "all"), and I am constantly increasing it, I do not consider my views, well, "uninformed". Uninformed would probably be a better word than bias for the points I was making.