>>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.<<

It certainly did. His name was Constantine. Without him, there would be no Christian religion today. It would have been another interesting Judaic offshoot that ran its course and died with the rest of them that were as quirky and off-the-wall as Christianity was at that time.

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

The name "Jesus" means "savior." There was a savior movement--that's all it was. Palestine and the diaspora afterward were rife with these things. Aaparently, the group that persevered combined the savior with the messiah--managed to equate them and, hence, Jesus Christ, the Savior-Messiah. The savior was no more historical than the messiah. He was never a historical man made into a divinity. He was always a divinity made into a man.

>>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<<

Now you're referring to Constantine. He called the Council of Nicea where all this happened. You cannot remove his influence or you remove Christianity.

And when you mention the four gospels as well as the apocrypha writings and the Nag Hammadi Library, etc. as some kind of proof Jesus existed, you may want to take note of the extremely different views and character ascribed to this Jesus and then tell me how he could be historical. The Nag Hammadi Library is clearly documenting a historical Jesus, which is probably why they were hidden away in the desert in the first place--to protect them from soldiers doing the bidding of the Roman Church which was championing the historical Jesus and determined to get rid of competing views. There's no reason such writings would have been buried in the desert--and without them, we'd have no real Gnostic writings.

As for Paul, did he believe in a historical Christ? Certainly not from what I see or perhaps you'd be kind enough to piece together the life of Christ as described by Paul. Perhaps you could explain how Paul journeyed to Jerusalem as recounted in Galatians and never once called it the city where his lord was crucified. Did Paul mention a virgin birth? No. Bethlehem? No. Nazareth? No. Miracles? No. A ministry? No. A mother named Mary? No. A record of Christ's travels? No. A collection of Christ's sayings? No. Since he mentioned Christ rising from the grave, did tell us where Christ's tomb can be found? No. Did he even mention that Christ was a contemporary? No. He put Christ in NO TIME FRAME WHATSOEVER. He clearly states he learned his gospel from no man and made references to meeting Christ in the 3rd heaven. A vision. His entire knowledge of Christ was taken from a vision and came from no one and nowhere else and Paul himself says so.

>>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.<<

Then why bother? It's the same as saying no such person existed.

>>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."<<

There was no Jesus because his history is fraudulent and was an obvious invention of diaspora Jews. The gospel writers did not know the geography of Palestine making Jesus' travels through there impossible as they relate it which means it didn't happen. Jesus argues with Pharisees quoting verbatim the Greek bible which Pharisees would neve accept over the Hebrew but they don't even argue this point with him. Obviously, the writers didn't know Hebrew which is typical of most Jews in the diaspora. It was a religion invented in the diaspora and set in Palestine where the evidence for its historicity is incredibly lacking.

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

I don't know but when people start calling him the son of god and telling me I must worship him and give him my money and vote for republican candidates because its what he wants me to do, I'll start looking into his life as well.