Well, as far as I know, we don't have a birth certificate and a stack of income tax returns from his employment as a carpenter, but it strikes me as a bit far-fetched to assert that a bunch of people suddenly decided to get together and form a religion spontaneously, without someone to lay down a few ideas and principles to initiate the whole process. Whether you call him "Jesus" or "Joshua" or "Yeshua" or "Fred," it seems a bit unlikely to me that this kerfuffle, that, incidentally, has lasted for some 2,000 years, got started without some central figure to start the ball rolling.

Now, what I'm saying here says nothing about divinity or supernatural powers

Then, when a whole bunch of folks get together afterward and wrote about this "Fred," or whatever his name was:   four Gospels, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and a whole bunch of epistles scrawled by a guy named Paul—not to forget that there were actually about twenty Gospels (works about "Fred," what he taught, and some of his adventures) that didn't make the cut when a council of geezers decided arbitrarily to approve certain writings, put them together in a single book, exclude a whole bunch of other stuff on the same subject, and call it The Holy Bible—while lots of people started wandering about and spouting the same stuff as this alleged "Fred" spouted, and the movement gradually expanded to include hundreds of millions of people, one tends to get the idea that maybe there might actually have been a "Fred." The guy may not have looked like he does in the Renaissance paintings and he may not have actually walked on water, but it makes a helluva lot more sense to think that he actually existed than it does to try to cobble up a theory as to how it could all have got started without him.

Believing that Jesus (or Fred) actually existed as a living, breathing person does not mean that one necessarily believes that the stories about his virgin birth, miracles, reappearance after his execution, or physical ascension into Heaven (head for the Moon and take a right turn) are true. Or that he is "the Son of God" or "God Incarnate" any more than any other person might be considered.

Personally, I tend to believe that someone named Jesus (or something similar) actually did exist, and said a lot of things that inspired a whole bunch of people. I am deeply skeptical about a lot of the rest of the details. And I also think that many of the people who came later missed his central message, cobbled together a lot of garbage about who he was and what he did, and generally made a total cock-up of what is now called "Christianity."

Tell me: other than a few writings, what evidence is there that Socrates existed?

Don Firth