Did Jesus exist?

[Existentialist]

Of course there is a difference between "I do not believe in a god" - and - "I believe there are no gods". Both are legitimate descriptions and definitions of two different kinds of atheism.

No, two different statements about knowledge and/or reasons for non-belief. Atheism, from the Latin A Atheos (A = Without, Theos = Belief in God(s)) simply means "without belief in God(s)"

No, the statements I described don't necessarily imply any concept of knowledge or reasons for belief. Of course you can add them in, but I don't think they're innately part of the statements themselves. People keep talking about the words "gnostic" or "agnostic" being required. Who or what requires these? I don't see any evidence for this requirement.

Whether one believes "There are no gods" (positive) or "there is no reason to believe in gods" (negative) is a matter of claimed knowledge, not a subset of Atheism it's self, and to be concisely labelled requires Gnostic or Agnostic to be attached to Atheism. Subsequently, I am an Agnostic Atheist, I am "without belief in gods" but not because of knowledge that "there are no gods".

I think you need to say more to demonstrate the necessity for a position on knowledge and belief. The denial of God's existence doesn't imply knowledge. A person can take a stance about reality without claiming to know the reality itself. By all means try to persuade me otherwise but I haven't been persuaded by anyone yet. There again, I haven't been discussing these aspects of atheism all that long either, so I'm open to persuasion from a convincing argument.

'Belief' is a bit unexplained. I know I used the term 'belief' above but that was in passing really. To use the word atheism legitimately as a way of describing one's assertion that God doesn't exist, it seems to me it's not necessary to make any statements about belief. Belief and knowledge are add-ons to this kind of atheism, not intrinsic parts of it.

Actually this is a useful point for me to say why I think whether Jesus existed or not is of little importance to the atheist. If you merely 'lack belief' in the existence of God, then usually this seems to be on the basis that there is insufficient evidence to persuade you that God exists, That position seems to invite a massive volume of supposed evidence from theists of the existence of God, or Jesus as God. You're then obliged to sift through the evidence in order to establish a position on it. Sifting through theist evidence is boring and becomes rather stressful, there's so much of it, none of it proves useful, and it gives you a headache. Well it does me anyway. "Agnostic atheists" - the sort of atheists who do not have belief in the existence of God - seem to get into a kind of love-hate relationship with theists, of whom they constantly demand more evidence which inevitably never gets delivered.

However, if by atheism you mean denial of the existence of God, then this can be on the basis of many things, but obviously not on the basis of evidence, supposed or otherwise. Therefore you can chuck all the evidence in the bin and go and enjoy your life instead. This is far preferable and infinitely more relaxing. I feel much happier this way.

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Atheism is the position of lacking a belief in gods and it is nothing more or less than that.

Well obviously it can be something more than that, because a lot of atheists go around asserting that god does not exist. That assertion is more than merely lacking a belief in god/s. It's more words, more defined, more meaningful, more interesting. Overall, it's more.

An atheist can certainly insist that he or she believes that there is no god, but that belief is not what makes him or her an atheist. It is the fundamental lack of belief that deities exist that makes one an atheist. It may seem like semantics, but it is an important distinction.

Well it is semantics but it's better to be on the right side in an argument about semantics, and I am. The belief that there is no god would make someone an atheist. I feel this is a sound statement. By all means feel free to try and persuade me otherwise - I'm always up for a decent discussion, but I'm pretty certain I've got the more defensible position.

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Atheism, from the Latin A Atheos (A = Without, Theos = Belief in God(s)) simply means "without belief in God(s)"

Sorry forgot to say, Atheos is Greek originally. A- is probably better translated as merely meaning some negative position, not necessarily "without". Theos just means god doesn't it? Not belief in god - that's an optional inference.