My Answer To An Interview Request About Jesus Mythicism

I was asked this question by Stephen J. Bedard: "Hello John. I am writing a column on Jesus mythicism. I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on why atheists seem to be more and more attracted to this theory? My interest is on what drives skepticism about God to skepticism about Jesus. Even a couple of sentences would be great."

Well, I'm always honored when someone wants my opinion, so I obliged him. I wrote:

Atheists all agree that the miraculous Jesus we read in the gospels never existed. His virgin birth was not unlike Hercules and Plato, and his life had a very striking resemblance to Apollonius of Tyana. In addition there is no corroboration of Jesus found in contemporaneous writers, nor of events at his birth like the Star of Bethlehem, or events at the end of his story like eclipses and earthquakes and saints being resurrected with him.

So it stands to reason atheists would doubt his existence.

My guess is that eventually agnosticism about Jesus will become the dominant atheist view. This is what Ralphael Lataster and Hector Avalos think, that we can’t know whether the man behind the myths existed or not, even though I’m still of the opinion he did.

He probably won't use everything I wrote but here it is. Could you do better? Can you document what I wrote?