Evidence: The Gathering

[Mudhammam]

No one with an IQ over 60 should fall for such absurd horseshit.

Well, given modern day polling about what American evangelicals believe, and the data preserved in Lucian from the latter half of the 2nd century, who observed of Peregrinus...

he learned the wondrous lore of the Christians, by associating with their priests and scribes in Palestine. And—how else could it be?—in a trice he made them all look like children, for he was prophet, cult-leader, head of the synagogue, and everything, all by himself. He interpreted and explained some of their books and even composed many, and they revered him as a god, made use of him as a lawgiver, and set him down as a protector, next after that other, to be sure, whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world.

...it appears that the primary audience of Christian mountebanks would have fit the bill.

However, the author of Acts, writing that Saul's intention was to usurp the civil authority of the Roman magistrates, coupled with Lucian's account of gullible Christians revering Peregrinus as god and lawgiver, perhaps sheds some light on the motivation for the persecution of their leaders. Christianity was a social and political movement that sought to subvert the laws of the State as much as it aimed to discredit the polytheistic superstitions the latter was poisonously enjoined with.