"///If you think Jesus never existed (a presumption of certainty which I laugh down my sleeve at when I hear it), then do you also think that Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Quetzlcoatl, Lao-Tse, and Mohammed never existed?///"

Mohammad did. He was enough of a barbarian and heartless bastard to prove it. The rest? No. Of course they didn't exist. They all have virtually the identical life story.

"////We can't historically prove one hell of a lot of stuff that actually happened in the past.///"

Kind of damns your whole point, doesn't it?

Jesus' advice to turn the other cheek had nothing moral attached to it. The authors of the gospels were united on only one thing: they believed that they were in the End Times and were using Jesus as a mouthpiece. Turn the other cheek simply meant not to get wrapped in such pointless matters because the earth was ending soon so prepare for that instead. Jesus could not have been concerned with helping them live better lives much less the generations to follow because, in his own words, there weren't going to be many more generations--that the Second Coming would happen soon, that many who stood there listening to him would still be around to witness it. And if that wasn't bad enough--he was wrong about that too.

"////Roman records show the local leaders felt threatened by a bloke of that name and asked the Roman authorities to execute him, which they did.////"

Source, please.