This comes up a lot and I went and answered a question posed over on the MythVision YouTube channel today that asked if I believed that Jesus was real.

I don’t know. Define your terms first!This is really where we run into so many problems between the historical Jesus camp and the mythicist camp, with the historical side often sniping at the other because they really wish that it was so, without being able to demonstrate it objectively.

My answer went something like “Define your terms. The magical man-god that did miracles and rose from the dead, that certainly didn’t exist in reality, but a person or group of people upon whom the mantle of godhood was posthumously draped, that could have happened, we just have no evidence whatsoever that it actually did.”

Here’s the problem that I have with people who insist that there was a historical Jesus. Prove it. Everything in the Bible is mythologized beyond the capacity to separate the stories from the reality, thus we have absolutely nothing that you can offer as evidence for the existence of a real proto-Jesus. “Maybe” isn’t evidence. It’s going along with the claim for the sake of argument.

I don’t do that. If I’m going to accept a claim, it’s going to have to be supported by evidence. If you don’t have evidence to present, then my answer to any question asserted that way is “I don’t know”. Because I don’t and neither do you.

This is really why I reject the idea of going along with anything “for the sake of argument”. John Loftus did a video that a very helpful subscriber helped me to find, where he explained exactly why it took him so long to publicly come to a mythicist position. He had to deal with the New Testament scholars and the vast majority of those were Christians who took the whole story on faith. If he said he didn’t believe it, they’d dismiss him as a crank and that would be the end of that.

So he played along for a long time until he built up the credibility where at least some subset of Bible-believing Christians wouldn’t just ignore him the second they found out he didn’t automatically go along with the crowd. I think there are still people out there, like Bart Ehrman, who are doing it because he wants to be able to engage with the religiously delusional. If you shut down the conversation at the first step, you don’t get to continue on and have an extended conversation.

I don’t  care about that. I care only about the facts, demonstrable and evidenced facts, yet I will get theists trying to confuse the issue. “What if it turned out that Socrates wasn’t real?” Okay, then he wasn’t. I am not emotionally attached to the idea of Socrates. We have writings that are currently attributed to him. I don’t really care who wrote them down. That those writings exist, that’s unquestionable. Who wrote them? I don’t care. I go where the evidence leads, not where my emotions want me to  go.

Yet Christians can’t do that because they need Jesus, whether Jesus was real or not. They need that specific person and that’s why they can’t follow the evidence to any other conclusions. If Jesus wasn’t real, their entire religion collapses around their knees. It’s why most of them refuse to even talk to mythicists, because they can’t actually address any of the criticisms offered. It’s why, I’m convinced, most secular historians at least play along with their position, because otherwise, the religious would go into hiding and refuse to take them seriously.

For all I know, there could have been some precursor to the Jesus story but we have no way of knowing what said person, or people, might have been like. The entire thing has been corrupted by the mythologizing in the Gospels and whatever was written by Paul. You have to be able to separate what you wish was true from what is demonstrably true and we just have nothing at all to examine when it comes to a potentially historical Yeshua. Could there have been one? We don’t know and I’m not willing to just shrug my shoulders and go along with the crowd for the sake of argument. I want to see how they justify it and the religious never can.

The “bad name” that mythicists get comes almost entirely from the pro-religion side and the non-theists who are terrified that if they admit to their doubts, nobody will talk to them anymore. It’s not people who are concerned about the facts and in the absence of facts, are not willing to play along so they can get others to talk to them. If the religious are that irrational that even the suggestion that they might be wrong sends them into a tizzy, I don’t know what to tell you. These aren’t people to whom you should tie your future. Truth is its own reward.

So am I a mythicist in the sense that I am absolutely, 100% positive that there was never a Jesus or Jesus analog? No. I’m not 100% positive of anything including my own existence. It could be the best option that we have but that doesn’t mean it’s demonstrated truth. I think we give the religious far too much leniency when it comes to letting them run down the primrose path with their blind faith in tow. It’s why you don’t see debates, even over the existence of God, where the theist’s faith is called into question. If anyone did that, the theist would just stomp off stage childishly and that would be the end of that.

In the absence of evidence, we have to go with “we don’t know” and leave it at that. If that hurts anyone’s feelings, too bad. Maybe you need to get over yourself and be more concerned with what actually is, not what you wish was true.

Give it a shot. It’s not that hard.