Jesus did not rise from the dead -- My debate opening statement.

[Minimalist]

My 2cents...the misfortune was in requiring some pedigree, when this whole christianity shit got started.......that they felt compelled to take an older myth from an ignorant time and affix it to what was, essentially, a popularizing tale for hellenic stoicism (obviously tailored to the peculiar audience which received it).

The effect of that, today and in the past, is that we've got totally -not- batshit crazy dumbasses™ focusing on the preamble to the detriment of the message.  The overarching "don't be a dick" narrative turns into the very reason that evangelical wastes of space engage in the asshattery they've become so well known for.

Meanwhile, stoicism without all the christ and yahweh mumbo jumbo is alive and well and not at all implicated in any of that bullshit - just as an example that it could have gone another way and didn;t -have- to result in what it did...the only difference between the two being the shit thumpers pound out all day erryday....and that, to me, suggests which part of the narrative is the problem.

Again, there was nothing special about jesusism much to the annoyance of modern fucktards like Dripshit.  There were Mystery Cults all over the Roman Empire and xtianity was just one more of them.  Further, on page 100 of On The Historicity of Jesus, Ricahrd Carrier points out:

Notably all the mystery religions were products of the same sort of cultural
syncretism. The Eleusinian mysteries were a syncretism of Levantine and
Hellenistic elements; the mysteries of Attis and Cybele were a syncretism of
Phrygian and Hellenistic elements; the mysteries of Jupiter Dolichenus were
a syncretism of Anatolian and Hellenistic elements; Mithraism was a syncretism
of Persian and Hellenistic elements; the mysteries of Isis and Osiris
were a syncretism of Egyptian and Hellenistic elements. Christianity is simply
a continuation of the same trend: a syncretism of Jewish and Hellenistic
elements. Each of these cults is unique and different from all the others in
nearly every detail-but it's the general features they all share in common
that reflect the overall fad that produced them in the first place, the very features
that made them popular and successful within Greco-Roman culture.

Poor xristards...they do so want to be special.