Does Jesus Mythicism give atheism a bad name?

[robvalue]

I think there's some misunderstanding about what the mythicist position actually is. It is almost always presented as a strawman.

It's not saying the entire story is fictional. It is saying that there isn't enough evidence to reasonably pinpoint a single historical figure; so that its most likely to be a mixture of several historical figures, or else so vague that it could have been based on hundreds of different real people without making any difference.

It's a position I lean towards myself, and I think it's perfectly reasonable. So no, I don't think it gives atheism a bad name. The strawmen presented about it may cause problems however. The arguments and evidence for pinpointing a single, distinct historical figure are (in my opinion) terrible. It's the default position as far as I'm concerned, after the HJ has failed to meet its burden of proof.

Technically, you could be a christian mythicist (sort of), I think. You could find that the objective evidence does not accurately pinpoint a certain historical figure; yet you still believe a specific figure did exist and was magic. In other words, the evidence is not accurate or reliable enough, but you go ahead and believe in the magic Jesus for whatever other reasons. From a historical records point of view, you would be a mythicist. You just then have their own personal beliefs on top of that, not based on (regular) evidence.

Some people actually do this, in my opinion, but without explicitly saying so. It's where "faith" comes in. If the evidence alone was sufficient, faith would be unnecessary.