One might argue that a typical theist's knowledge of the lack of material evidence for his religion is also pure hearsay. Neither most theists nor most atheists personally investigated the relevant archaeological artefacts. Similarly, few western theists directly experienced things commonly believed to be extremely evil (holocaust, famines, ). They are simply "mistrusting the current archaeological/historical" elite.

edit:

Yes, yes, of course virtually no real theists (or even agnostics) use the "it's all hearsay, I'm merely sceptical" defence. And indeed, large swaths of theology deal with virtually all problems you could think of. I was merely pointing out that an individual theist could, in principle, use a similar defence to the one ArisKatsaris was using.