Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Aractus]

I happen to know that many modern faith healers who knowingly use charlatanism and conjuring tricks for their trade actually do believe in the Gaud they're supposedly serving, and that's actually how they justify deceiving people in those demonstrations in the first place. The rationale seems to be this: since they know that Gaud exists and they know he refuses to show evidence of himself, they think it's ok to "help Gaud along" by fabricating evidence and events. As long as they're trying to convince people of what they believe to be true, any means necessary is acceptable.

So yes, the apostles and early writers may have been motivated to finagle a more convincing story if they somehow realized that the version they were willing to die for would not be particularly convincing to other people. If people are willing to die for a cause, they're often also willing to lie, steal, and cheat for it, too.

You can't have it both ways. Either they're liars and they know they are, or they honestly believe in their beliefs that they say they believe in. Paul repeatedly talks about the need to be generous and specifically warns against greed (1 Cor. 5.11) as well as Jesus telling his disciples that "How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." after rebuking the rich young ruler, and the same thing appearing in 1 Timothy where the author (claiming to be Paul) declares that the love of money is a root to every kind of evil. It is quite clear that Christianity led to persecution (starting with John the Baptist) in the early church and the evidence for this is overwhelming in the later centuries.

Further along the line as you well know power corrupts - or to put it more correctly absolute power corrupts absolutely. And this is what you saw from the Church in the middle ages - the church leaders were clearly incensed with power; yet this is not a valid motivation for Paul, James, and Peter in the first century. None of them held any power, none of them appeared to aspire to it preferring to preach the gospel of Salvation that had its roots in Jesus. That is the motivating force, and this is clear when you read the New Testament - to claim otherwise is simply absurd. If Christianity was invented by Paul, Peter and James then they would have claimed one of them to be the prophet instead of Jesus. Jesus is the one who came up with and preached the gospel of Salvation. He claimed to be the Messiah. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that he believed that he was deity - in fact he probably did not believe that - but its a belief that his followers formed in the years following his execution.