Objective evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ?

[Mudhammam]

I don't deny him, I just say he has not met his burden. I don't need to make a positive claim "he didn't exist" any more than I need to say that about Sauron.

To be consistent you would have to be fairly skeptical about the existence of any individual who ever lived in the ancient world, and such extreme caution about Homer or Jesus or Socrates or anyone else---when there are reasons to think some facts can be more ascertained than others, at least in terms of probability---requires further justification than simply saying, "People sometimes write fiction."

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Examples such as the cobbling together of a virgin birth narrative that places Jesus' delivery in Bethlehem while he was commonly regarded as a Nazarene, or the clumsy attempts to side-step the significance of his baptism by John the Baptist, suggest a historical core to the story.

Why?

Aren't they more properly examples of shitty literature?

I don't think so, otherwise we'd expect to find someone in the first century who admitted as much. The impression instead is that Christians believed in a real person who had recently died at the hands of real people.