A simple challenge for atheists

[SteveII]

To summarize, if you can't impugn the beliefs of the people of the first century who really saw that Jesus was born, brought a radical message of love and redemption, died,

To this point, there's not much to impugn. A group of people knew a person named Jesus who preached and stirred up the locals by claiming to be their god-sent savior, and was killed for his trouble.

and rose again, then you cannot impugn those that hold the same view today.

That's where you run into a problem. Since dead people aren't in the habit of bringing themselves back to life outside of myths and legends and the occasional Marvel comic, you need a lot more than just "I saw it." Considering some of the things written in the gospels, the fact that no one seemed interested in writing down what happened for decades afterwards is odd, to say the least.

And references to Jesus outside of those gospels, if we accept them all as genuine, are equally uninspired. If Josephus really did write was is attributed to him regarding Jesus, he seems utterly unmoved by it, relegating it to a single paragraph and then going on about his business after describing a man who was actually god. Jesus made a pretty lukewarm impression, it seems, before Constantine decided that he was a pretty convenient big deal.

How can you say that no one wrote down anything? Just because we don't have earlier writings than the gospels do not mean that there weren't any.

Most of the church's growth happened outside of Palestine so that fact that Josephus didn't speak more on it is understandable.