“American Atheists are planning to put up more holiday ‘Myth’ billboards… this year, the group’s planning to erect signs featuring images of Santa, Jesus, Poseidon and the devil next to the message: ’37 Million Americans know MYTHS when they see them.'”

Thirty-seven million Americans agree with me? So, why have there been atheists attacking me over the years – and extremely obnoxiously and viciously at that, precisely like rabid religious fundamentalists? In fact, some of these “atheists” have teamed up with Christians just so they can bash me. Others have “borrowed” my work and presented it as their own, while still others have sabotaged my work behind my back. Not to mention the stream of hate speech and falsehoods about my work, and the failure to admit error on the part of critics who have been demonstrated to be mistaken.

The fact is I’ve been online since 1995 providing evidence that Jesus is a mythical figure, and for two years before that I was circulating offline my “Origins of Christianity” article doing likewise. My book The Christ Conspiracy – which I am currently revising – was published in 1999 and has been read by tens of thousands.

Since that time, I’ve been assailed by both theists and atheists for my research. But apparently the concept of Jesus as myth is good enough to get a rise out of people during the holidays. Fortunately, there are other atheists who have been mythicists themselves and/or supported my work, and here we see another effort by the American Atheists organization to point out the obvious truth: To wit, the figure of “Jesus Christ” in the New Testament is a fictional compilation of characters and sayings from antiquity.

As but one example, in 1994, American Atheists’ then-president, Jon Murray, was quoted in LIFE magazine thus:

There was no such person in the history of the world as Jesus Christ. There was no historical, living, breathing, sentient being by that name. Ever. The Bible is a fictional, non-historical narrative. The myth is good for business.

That article was published a year after I began circulating my “Origins of Christianity” essay essentially saying the same thing. I read this quote when it first came out and believed that American Atheists therefore must be a mythicist organization. One of their publications was Dr. John Jackson’s Christianity Before Christ, which I used in my research. While apparently no one in the atheist community objected to Jackson’s research, when it was filtered through me, it became highly objectionable to some.

In the meantime, while my believing and nonbelieving critics have been carrying on thus, I have continued to do the difficult but important and fascinating research and to make it available as widely to the public as I possibly can – all without help from groups who apparently agree with my viewpoint.

American Atheists Holiday ‘Myth’ Billboards To Go Up In New Jersey, Ohio, Florida

American Atheists are planning to put up more holiday “Myth” billboards this year.

Last year, the atheist organization’s “Myth” campaign featured billboards with phrases such as: “You Know It’s A Myth. This Season, Celebrate Reason,” the Christian Post reports.

But this year, the group’s planning to erect signs featuring images of Santa, Jesus, Poseidon and the devil next to the message: “37 Million Americans know MYTHS when they see them.”…

Note the “protesting too much” from the Christian pastor in this Huffpo article:

Only the most dense and simple-minded person would put [Jesus] in the same category as the other three. Clearly, even those who lack a personal commitment to Jesus recognize that there was in fact some historical figure by this name–religious leader and teacher–around 2,000 years ago.

It is a fact how? For the past more than two hundred years, hundreds of scholars and researchers in America, Europe, Russia and elsewhere have put together an immense body of literature in a variety of languages, using sources dating back to remotest antiquity, logically and rationally demonstrating that Jesus Christ is as mythical a figure as is the Greek son of God Hercules. This massive body of literature within the field of what is called “mythicism” emanates from some of the most erudite individuals in history and has been appreciated by some of the most admired human beings the world has ever produced.

Since there is no credible, scientific evidence for the contention of a historical Jesus having walked the Earth 2,000 years ago, we are supposed merely to accept the word of individuals such as the pastor above, whose only “argument,” it seems, is to insult and ridicule us into submission to the extraordinary claims that have no extraordinary proof. “Most dense and simple-minded” for putting Jesus into the category of myth? Early Christian fathers such as Justin Martyr and Tertullian themselves put Jesus into that category with their comparisons of him with the “sons of Jupiter,” i.e., the Greek and Roman gods.

In Chapter 21 of his First Apology, entitled, “Analogies to the History of Christ,” Justin remarked:

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propounded nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.

Are Justin Martyr and Tertullian “dense” and “simple-minded?” Napoleon, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson – all of whom appear to have dabbled in Jesus mythicism – are “dense” and “simple-minded?” How about the numerous clergymen and people with PhDs who have done likewise – they are “dense” and “simple-minded” too?

Once again essentially proving that the religion business is all about insulting people into accepting implausible and impossible doctrines without any hard evidence…

Further Reading

The Jesus Myth
Christ Conspiracy Articles
Freethought Nation Forums
Christian Terrorism and the Atheist Inquisition