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RichardKennaway comments on Rationality Quotes May 2014 - Less Wrong
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Which side are you claiming to be crackpots?
Seriously, I can't see how anyone could claim that Jesus was ahistorical who isn't some combination of doing reverse-stupidity on Christianity or taking an absurd contrarian position for the sake of taking an absurd contrarian position.
Edit: fixed typo.
I would think that believing Jesus didn't exist would be just as absurd as thinking that all or almost all of the events in the Gospels literally happened. Yet the latter make up a significant number of practicing Biblical scholars. And for the majority of Biblical scholars who don't think the Gospels are almost literally true, still have a form of Jesus-worship going on as they are practicing Christians. It would be hard to think that Jesus both came back from the dead and also didn't exist; meaning that it would be very hard to remain a Christian while also claiming that Jesus didn't exist, and most Biblical scholars were Christians before they were scholars.
The field both is biased in a non-academic way against one extreme position while giving cover and legitimacy to the opposite extreme position.
Modern day people who believe there was no real historical preacher, probably named Yeshua or something like that, wandering around Palestine in the first century, and on whom the Gospels are based, are crackpots. Their position is strongly refuted by the available evidence. You don't have to be a theist or a Christian to accept this. See, for example, pretty much any of the works of Bart Ehrman, particularly "Did Jesus Exist?"
There are legitimate disputes about this historical figure. How educated was he? Was he more Jewish or Greek in terms of philosophy and theology? (That he was racially Jewish is undenied.) Was he a Zealot? etc. However that he existed has been very well established.