There's a noted lack of good evidence for Jesus being a historical figure at all. The earliest historical references to him, that are often pointed at to say "look, this proves he existed" are from 70 to 100 years later (Tacitus, Josephus and maybe the Talmud), and are from people who knew him only by his developing reputation amongst early Christians. Tacitus claims "He was crucified by Pilot," but that was the story told by early Christians as well. There's some record that "James, the brother of Jesus, he who was called Christ, died" but that's pretty thin to me. You can go read about this dude here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James,_brother_of_Jesus

What there's not are Roman records of "masses of people following a man around" or "a great leader of the people being crucified." We have records of how much grain people grew in Roman territories in the middle east and of crime and punishment from the region, but nothing about this, which would have been a disruption and concern to the Roman authorities?

An unproven hypothesis I really like is that Jesus was a Roman psy-op aimed at pacifying the Jewish people, by using their own prophesies against them, trying to get them to believe that their Messiah had indeed come and wanted them to stop rebelling (which they were constantly doing), be peaceful, love thy neighbor and "render unto Cesar what is Cesar's." If you think about it, the New Testament is so full of things that are about "being a good citizen", the way the Romans of the time would have wanted.

There's a book about this idea: https://www.atheistsforliberty.org/opinion/jesus-was-a-psy-op-a-book-review-of-creating-christ/

You know 100% who would have been tricked by the Book of Daniel? Roman operatives trying to create a fake new religion. It also explains the prevalence of Mediterranean and middle eastern sun god themes in the Christ story. They were working with what they knew.

It even explains the need to evangelize. Of course you want adherents to this to go tell all the other Jews "the Good News."

But the early Christians were persecuted and the Romans hated them. I mean yeah, but clearly whoever launched such a campaign didn't tell anyone else about their secret plans and 50 years later the whole thing was forgotten. I think about how much has happened and been forgotten in my own lifetime and I'm not even 50 yet... and our earliest writings to support the veracity of Christ come from almost twice as long as 50 years out? When this was supposedly this big important guy being followed by a multitude working miracles and healing everybody? Color me VERY skeptical.

You got one. 😉

Yehoshu'a ben Yosef probably was a legendary blend of multiple people

I suspect that some traditions about Jesus of Nazareth were possibly (probably?) previously about John the baptizer. And sure yeah some things ascribed to Jesus may be from others, but the Daniel thing just seems like a really clear example of something that undermines the Christian narrative of Jesus being a wise teacher. And having never seen it spelled out before I thought I'd ask for reactions.

We all know it's a bunch of borrowed and blended and rebranded mythology, and Yehoshu'a ben Yosef probably wasa a legendary blend of multiple people. That said, humans were still barely out of the caves by then and the gospels written 100-300 years after the time the events supposedly occurred; and it was still revolutionary thinking for it's time. If anything, we're devolving back into barbarism (as predicted about 150 years ago). Beyond that, thetales furthered an empire trying to take over the world, so there's that.

The most common impediment to clear thinking that non-believer must confront is the idea that the burden of proof can be fairly placed on his shoulders: "How do you know there is no God? Can you prove it? You atheists are just as dogmatic as the fundamentalists you criticize." This is nonsense: even the devout tacitly reject thousands of gods, along with the cherished doctrines of every religion but their own. Every Christian can confidently judge the God of Zoroaster to be a creature of fiction, without first scouring the universe for evidence of his absence. Absence of evidence is all one ever needs to banish false knowledge. And bad evidence, proffered in a swoon of wishful thinking, is just as damning. But honest reasoning can lead us further into the fields of unbelief, for we can prove that books such as the Bible and the Quran bear no trace of divine authorship. We know far too much about the history of these texts to accept what they say about their own origins. And just imagine how good a book would be if an omniscient Being had written it.

Ummm, yes? You aren't incorrect?

I don't beleive in a god other then the univese/physics/the natural processes themselves.

I was just saying that it is absolutely not surprising that if you beleive in something in a religeous way, you'd choose it over what you consider lesser virtues.

I would rather, for instance, stop global warming then end world hunger. This is entirely because I revere the planet itself more then human life in a very spiritual feeling way.

'If God exists, why does he behave like a narcissistic absentee landlord with a flair for blood rituals and dietary restrictions? The Abrahamic deity, revered across continents, seems less like a cosmic architect and more like a Bronze Age tribal chieftain with anger management issues. Yet billions genuflect before him daily. Religious faith is often praised as a virtue. But what other domain celebrates belief without evidence? Would you board a plane built by someone who “just felt” the wings would hold? Would you trust a surgeon who prays instead of sterilizing instruments? Richard Dawkins famously called faith “a process of non-thinking.” Yet society elevates it above reason, as if ignorance were a badge of honour. Why is faith exempt from the scrutiny we apply to every other claim? Religion thrives not because it is true, but because it is comforting. It offers immortality, cosmic justice, and a celestial surveillance system that rewards obedience. Freud called religion “a universal obsessional neurosis.” Is it any wonder that belief correlates strongly with existential insecurity? Consider: If you were guaranteed eternal life through science, would you still need God? Or is belief merely a coping mechanism dressed in sacred robes? The Bible commands love, yet sanctions genocide (see Deuteronomy 20:16). It preaches humility yet demands worship. It forbids murder yet glorifies divine slaughter. If morality comes from God, why does it resemble the ethics of a medieval warlord? Sam Harris argues that morality predates religion and is better served by reason and empathy than by scripture. So why do we outsource ethics to ancient texts? Enter the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Church of the SubGenius, and the Invisible Pink Unicorn parody religions that expose the absurdity of faith by mimicking its structure. Ethan Quillen’s “The Satirical Sacred” explores how these mock faiths challenge religious privilege and reveal the arbitrary nature of belief. Ask yourself: If a belief system is indistinguishable from parody, should it be taken seriously? Religion is not benign. It fuels sectarian violence, suppresses scientific progress, and enforces archaic social norms. From the Crusades to anti-vaccine movements, faith has often been a force of regression. Shouldn’t beliefs be judged by their consequences? Religion persists not because it is rational, but because it is ritualized, institutionalized, and incentivized. It is a cultural fossil revered, untouchable, and absurd. The atheist does not merely reject God; he rejects the intellectual laziness that sustains Him. Do you believe because it is true, or because you were told to? And if the answer is the latter, what else might you be wrong about?'

"Atheists don't do"? Many people believe X; therefore, X is true.?

'Imagine that you were omnipotent, omniscient, and master of the entire universe. You decided that you were going to give one -- just one -- book to humanity. It would be their moral compass, an insight into their nature and into yours, and act as a guide for how they could live rightly and walk a path that would lead their souls into an eternity with you. Obviously, the first thing you would want to put in there are some totally unscientific, archaic behavioural codes for menstruating women, and for pregnant women after they give birth. You would want to be sure to help them regulate slavery and specify how badly they were allowed to beat their slaves. And of course, you would want the book to be chock full of mythology -- a creation myth, a flood myth, a fictional exodus, and hagiographical stories about how your loyal armies killed the shit out of everyone who dared to worship the wrong gods. There is a point here about the Bible that, in any estimation, really cannot be understated: there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that could not have been simply made up by Bronze-Age human beings. Nothing at all. There are no profound scientific insights that such cultures could never have known. There is some bogus cosmology, a flat Earth, and instructions for how to slaughter animals among other profound insights. Now, some Christians are keen to point out that the Jews did apparently get some things right. They had “Imagine that you were the perfect, omnipotent, all-knowing Lord and Creator of a sanitation system... but so did ancient Egypt, the Hittites, the Elamites, and the Aegean civilization. So, big whoop. They also had some codes for cleansing themselves after handling dead bodies or people with leprosy, but these rituals also included ritual animal sacrifice. Not exactly innovative. Moreover, the rituals themselves were stupid -- after handling a corpse, for example, you would be "unclean for seven days" [Numbers 19:11]. This obviously had little to do with hygiene. Then we have the New Testament. Written by anonymous authors decades after the events purportedly happened and filled with internal factual contradictions, with no trace of the original manuscripts and thousands of copies rife with errors, there is nothing about the New Testament that demands that a rational person should believe it to be divinely inspired. I challenge Christians to show that the evidence demanded that we believe the supernatural claims of the Bible are anything more than made-up. There is simply no reason whatsoever for any rational person to make such an assumption. Is the Bible really the best God could do? Is this book of myths, scientific blunders, and ambiguous or even downright demonstrably bogus historicity really what anyone really thinks the omnipotent Lord of the universe would bestow upon humanity? That this God would ignore humanity for the bulk of its 200,000+ years on the Earth, only deciding to reveal his One True Religion to a small, mostly illiterate Bronze Age tribal culture? Think of all the things the Bible could be if it were really divinely inspired. Think of all the knowledge and insight such a holy book could contain that simply could never have been made up -- profound scientific insights, timeless moral instruction, and revelation clear enough to prevent the innumerable schisms in Christian theology over fundamental issues, like how to attain salvation. Any sane, rational view of the Bible shows it to be little more than the confused scribblings of ignorant Bronze or early Iron Age tribes.

'

Extra Virgin

Reminds me of apophatic theology. I'm not a Christian, I'm not a Muslim, I'm not a Hindu, Baha'i, Sikh, Jain or Buddhist. Am I an atheist? Maybe, it depends on what you mean...

But also predetermination. So all your actions are already known to God before hand. Meaning your choices are already decided before you make them. Yet you are held accountable for making them.

Thought Virgin?

As others said normal is semantically unsuitable. Original, initial, default is what you’re describing

people get wierd with language. I have athiests saying all agnostics are athiests and vice versa. its kinda true but its a matter of magnitude. Many of these things don't make sense in the strictest literal sense but we basically know what people mean by societal context. also some use it in ways were it can be a bit different. When I was agnostic I knew an athiest who believed in ghosts. this did not make sense to me but to him the term was only about religion and not all supernatural stuff. At that time I identified as agnostic because for me the existence of god or whatever was a 50/50 shot. To me it could as equally be assuming you don't start getting into specifics. I identify as athiest now because I feel the chances of any kind of supernatural thing being so remote as to be zero. less than getting hit by lightening right after you won the lottery while an extinction level asteroid was hitting the earth and a gamma ray burst was blasting our solar system.

Language is used to communicate. If you get so caught up in the "logically correct" word to use that people don't know what you mean, you're defeating the purpose. The "right" word is the one that people understand regardless of how messy it's history is

There is a REALLY good reason for it. We are just not meant to know God's will so don't worry about it.

usually people mean “average” when they say “normal”

100%. I'm tired and didn't want to really elaborate on the analogy lol

Not just a majority, an overwhelming majority of people to the point that not expressing a belief was prosecuted by society.

This might end up on unpopularopinion comm instead.

If you aren't talking about religion, then you don't need the label at all. If someone brings up religion, then you just state you don't believe. Getting wrapped up in proper labeling is creating a problem where there isn't one. "Normal" or "default' or any other labeling like that will just confused the issue when the majority considers themselves a believer in something. Why do you need the label? That will probably tell you how to approach this, not from you as the base but from the subject.

You're not wrong that everyone is born without belief and learns it.But I think the human mind is wired for some type of religious thought - the anthropomorphism we evolved for group survival is strong, and leaches out to other things. So a bunch of kids born and growing up without influence by others would likely come up with some higher power that is controlling things they don't understand. Critical thinking and scientific method to dispel this and give rational explanations is not that old in our civilization, and took a lot of effort to figure out. On their own, kids wouldn't and would tend to go with what makes their brain satisfied, and that's religion in a nutshell. So that is default, eventually.

It's like the Bible, but made by the Dragonball Z Abridged guys. I'd watch the entire thing

In order to be normal you have to subscribe to societal norms which atheists don't do. At least not in the US.

In a vacuum, a label like non - stamp collector seems silly, until you add the context of the majority of the population are stamp collectors and push others to collect and make laws around stamp collecting. It starts to be a more meaningful label in that scenario.