[super_scooper]

The wikipeida article you linked to points to many many pieces of evidence that are not "mythical gospels and other Christian sources". Occam's razor would dictate that the simplest explanation for an extremely fast rise in numbers of dispersed communities evangelizing the teachings of a person is that such person existed and espoused those teachings, right?

Also it's just incorrect to say "as an atheist I have no skin the game". If you are agnostic/atheist you range from questioning to non-beleif in god which necessitates that Christianity and other religions could be or are wrong. It seems ridiculous to me to hold a position that contradicts another and say you have no skin in deciding wheather the other one is right.

[torben-friis]

Being an atheist does not imply stakes on the existence of historical Jesus. Atheists do not deny the existence of religious figures and leaders, they deny their divinity or supernatural qualities.

Sure, atheists‘ beliefs are benefited by religions being wrong in general, but no smart atheist would choose the totally plausible existence of a person as a hill to die on, when there’s such a large surface area of unlikely claims to attack instead (miracles, etc).

[bnralt]

Sure, but Jesus mythicism is a fringe belief who's popularity exists almost entirely within the more activist atheist crowd, while just about no serious historian finds any validity in the theory.

I agree that no atheist should have stakes in the theory, it's pretty clear that a lot of the more vocal types think they have some kind of stake in it (Bill Maher has been a big proponent of it, to give one prominent example).

[skissane]

I sometimes think there is "atheism" and then there is "atheism".

There is "atheism" in the sense of its literal definition, and then there is "atheism" as a contemporary cultural phenomena, which involves many beliefs (even if only commonly rather than universally) which do not necessarily follow from that literal definition. "Jesus mythicism" is one of those later beliefs, even if a lot less than universal one.

To give some other examples, I know someone who calls themselves an "atheist" – and indeed, they fit the literal definition, they think the existence of God is improbable – but they also believe in ghosts and a life after death, beliefs which are generally outside the bounds of "atheism" in that second sense. Similarly, the early 20th century British philosopher John McTaggart, was an atheist in the literal sense – he was convinced that the existence of God was impossible, and even believed that he had a proof of God's necessary non-existence – but he also believed that matter and time were mere illusions, and that all that really existed was timeless immortal souls and their eternal love for one another – beliefs radically incompatible with "atheism" in that second sense. Similarly, many Buddhists (especially Theravadins) are in some literal sense atheists, in that they deny the existence of any ultimate God (as is claimed to exist in the Abrahamic religions and in many Hindu sects), but they also have many beliefs (rebirth, past life memories, enlightened beings having psychic, even miraculous, powers) which are way outside "atheism" in that second sense.

(Even though orthodox Theravada does believe in gods, including those of Hinduism, as mortal non-ultimate deities, I think that belief is somewhat peripheral, in that a person could interpret that belief in an essentially non-literal way, and not be that far from Theravadan orthodoxy; however, rebirth is a much more central belief, and to interpret that in an equally non-literal way, would be straying much further from that orthodoxy.)

[torben-friis]

Fair enough. In my head atheism includes lack of belief in anything supernatural, including also entities that aren't exactly god-like and abstract powers (karma, tao, fate, etc). I realise that's not the strict, literal definition though, but I can find a better word for that term (skeptic seems to be too broad).

[skissane]

How about "naturalism", "materialism", "physicalism"?

I think the most fundamental belief behind that worldview, is that the most fundamental theoretical entities of physics (whatever they may turn out to be–particles, waves, strings, branes, forces, fields, etc) are the only ultimate reality, and everything else which exists somehow grounds its existence on them. The non-existence of God is merely a consequence of that fundamental belief, not a fundamental belief in itself. "Naturalism", "materialism", "physicalism" all do a better job of naming that fundamental belief than "atheism" does, which is a word which refers to a non-fundamental consequence of it.

"Antisupernaturalism" is another option, albeit it has the disadvantage of being purely negative, whereas I think this worldview actually makes positive claims about the nature of reality and what can be known of it.

[thaumasiotes]

> Occam's razor would dictate that the simplest explanation for an extremely fast rise in numbers of dispersed communities evangelizing the teachings of a person is that such person existed and espoused those teachings, right?

No? A large number of dispersed communities cannot have all been exposed to the hypothetical founder directly espousing their own teachings; the phenomenon you seek to explain actually precludes the explanation you're trying to give.

A rapid rise in dispersed groups following a set of teachings has to be explained by a large number of people espousing those teachings in parallel. It makes no difference whether those people got their knowledge as disciples of an individual person, as members of a committee devoted to a supernatural force, by reading the same book at the same time in different places, through the grapevine, or by independently adapting their teachings to what their audiences want.