Atheists being asked about the existence of Jesus

[Acrobat]

And you wonder why Ahistoricist get categorized with flat earthers and holocaust, unsurprisingly there’s even a zeitgeist film promoting this idea.

Apparently non-existing people can write letters, and we can’t trust anything from Josephus.

The problem is, no one wrote about Jesus during the time when Jesus existed. All historical writings about Jesus are posthumous; they were written long after he was dead. I'd have to imagine that such an insanely influential figure would've been written about during his life, while he was still alive, by a multitude of people. Instead, we have a small handful of writings about him, some which don't even actually mention him by name (references to Chrestos in some writings), that were all written well after the man was supposedly killed.

Obviously, no serious historian considers the Bible a reliable, historical sourcework. There may be bits and pieces of true information sprinkled throughout the Bible - maybe - but it is mostly a pile of poorly written nonsense. The fact is, despite the "consensus" that exists among historians, the evidence for the existence of Jesus is truly lackluster and doesn't do much to convince me, personally. Hell, if it convinces you, I got some beachfront property to sell you in Idaho. The beautiful thing is that facts, if thought to be incorrect, can be questioned by anyone using logic and research. I don't have to be a historian to understand that the evidence of a historical Jesus is underwhelming, at best. Your characterization of people who deny the historicity of Jesus as being akin to flat-earthers or Holocaust-deniers is totally unfounded and completely off-base.

I think prominent atheist figures avoid debate on this topic because the real answer is mostly inconsequential. The consensus that exists that simply accepts Jesus as a real man, may very well exist simply because Western society has quite a religious bent, and I think most people, even atheists, figure, "Hell, if the historians say he was real, I guess he was real." And maybe it's not questioned so much because the existence of Jesus would do nothing to prove the case for Christianity as a religion. The fantastical claims made by the Bible wouldn't be rectified if we suddenly learned that Jesus was, in fact, real. It kind of doesn't even matter.

So... Was Jesus a real man? Maybe. I'm not entirely convinced, but as others have said in this thread, it's certainly possible. It's also possible that King Arthur was real, or Beowulf. Who knows? Who cares?

Like creationist, atheists generally making such arguments are all together clueless of history, in particular early history, it’s writing and contexts.

It’ll probably come as a surprise but people in the first century didn’t write that often, just like people didn’t really send email in the 1970s. Writing was a luxury, the primary method of convey things was through the oral tradition.

Such atheists also seem oblivious that writings we have of figures of early history, are almost exclusively written after these figures have died. The fact the we have writings about Jesus some 20-40 years after his death is pretty remarkable, in fact we have a first hand account on someone who met his disciples and brother. How many agreed up figures on ancient history, could we say that about, in comparison, let alone a religious figure?

On top of that the only historian writing of that entire period of Roman Palestine, that we still have is the works of Josephus.

Such atheists also seem incapable of reasoning, if the evidence for the historicity of Jesus was so lacklackuster, than you should be able to form a compelling ahistorical explanation, that’s close to as persuasive, contains a parallel degree of explanatory power as a historical explanations. The fact is you can’t without stretching credibility, as bad as creationist and holocaust deniers do, speaks volumes.

But such atheists are incapable of contemplating this. The historical method is about the pursuit of the best explanation, the strength of evidence is matter of explanatory power. No ahistoricist conclusions come even remotely close to a historical explanation in this regard, that folks here have yet to even offer one.

Atheists have perhaps been deluded by the idea of a lack of belief, think the real argument is between Jesus existing, and a lack of belief in Jesus existing, requiring some sort of super proof to resolve, when it’s an argument between Jesus existing, and not existing, the viability of historical explanation, over non historical ones.

Yet it seems that many atheists seem unable to get their head around this idea, perhaps deluded by the idea that lack of belief is an actual position, other than laziness in thought.

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Uhm we have a first hand account of someone who met him, we also have Josephus writing of his death, so why should we assumed he’s not a historical person, other than it’s inconvenient  for the narrative you want to sell?

Is that the expectation here, if someone isn’t a historical person, we should expect to find first accounts of someone meeting him, and an entry in the historical record of the time, detailing his death?

We do not have a first hand account, lol.  Josephus writes about the beliefs of others.  

The expectation..here, is that you will eventually provide something more than "magic book says..."

You’re just a broken record buddy, when you get around to providing us a good explanation as to how a non historical figure, ended up having a first hand account of a person meeting his brother and disciples, as well as having his brothers death written about by Roman historians please let me know?

Was there some early secret Christian plot to fool the Romans and everyone else at the time that Jesus was a historical person? Is the mother of all conspiracy theories true, and they almost got away with it, until 2000 years later some atheist on the internet figured it out