differentiate biases from prejudices
Answers
Prejudice refers to 'pre-judging', or deeming something as superior or inferior before looking at the evidence. If there's a trial with a prejudiced judge the outcome is already determined before the defense or prosecution speaks. In practice, such things as race, gender or sexuality have already defined the judge's decision.
Bias is the spectrum with prejudice at its extreme end: a biased judge will see and unsee things in a particular 'direction', favoring a particular conclusion. A completely unbiased judge would need an equal amount of persuasion to reach any conclusion, using consistent rules of investigation; a completely biased judge would be prejudiced, always coming to a particular conclusion no matter the investigation. If merely biased they may not have an outcome already determined before the examination begins, but it will be harder to convince them in one direction than another because one arguer is working 'uphill' while another works 'downhill'. The testimony of two women might be needed to match the testimony of a man, for example.
The mind of a hardcore conspiracy theorist is an example of such a biased court, up to the extreme of a prejudiced court. The standards of evidence can be changed in two general ways: lowering the standards for evidence in support of a belief, and raising the standards for evidence against a belief. At the lowest possible standard, the claim is evidence of itself; at the highest possible standard, anyone who is not omniscient just cannot be sure of anything.
So the Bible is evidence of its own claims, and if challenged believers will ask 'were you there?' or 'are you god?' Bigfoot enthusiasts use the same strategy: claims of Bigfoot's existence are regarded as evidence of themselves, and your disagreement is irrelevant because you weren't there. In this biased court, to show that a piece of footage is a hoax you will have to provide a suit and a polygraphed confession long before they have to provide an actual Bigfoot, and even if you do the work of debunking many believers will still ignore you because you 'weren't there'. They are prejudiced: the judgement was already made before you started talking. They weren't there either, but they don't bother themselves with that thought.