Actually, the sources I tend to trust most are non-christian Roman historians. Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius all would have been contemporaries of Jesus, and all mentioned him in their writings, mostly to talk about what a nuisance the Jews were becoming.

None mention anything about his supernatural affiliations.

Well, that's not exactly right. Most of us eat them.

They are delicious breaded and deep fried. And maybe a little ketchup.

It's probably all the morality talk that causes it. I know i have this crazy idea that people should walk the walk and not just talk a good game. So I want all these moral god fearing political leaders to take responsibility for their immoral actions.

But there are other things to talk about surely.

Religion itself is fear driven, and a means of keeping people "in line" with a certain self expressed and imposed dogma.

Been there done that on being a member of organized religion. I consider myself a spiritual being now, and am quite content.

I appreciated the point about the US Constitution's precise wording. I am frankly dumbfounded as to why no one hasn't brought suit yet to force the issue.

Not really comtemporaries..they were slightly later. But it really does not matter, I agree with you on the metaphorical value of religious writings as opposed to believing whatever God dictated said religious document and that it should ve followed verbatim.

All the morality talk by the Right makes me want to scream too. I agree that before leaders point finges at sayyyy....Gay Marriage....they might wanna look at their own stuff and do what is right.

Don't even get me started on war, the death penalty, blowing up abortion clinics, bullying.....all in the name of religion.....

Oh yeah, for sure. The kicker is that the calendar/holidays themselves are largely heathen-derived. Christmas (Jul/Yule), Easter (from the Germanic goddess of spring/fertility Eostre/Ostara), saints days (for example, St. Brigid's feast coinciding with Imbolc, St. John the Baptist's Day with northern European midsummer celebrations lest we forget those wonderful bonfires :p), not to mention holiday figures like Santa Claus and their root in the Wild Hunt of northern Europe.

You'd think people would clue in that christianity is a mythology like any other, and one that adopted the practices of other religions to gain followers. Yet people still whine that saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas is an attack on christians...yet the holiday itself isn't even originally christian.

Have faith in it if you'd like, but there's hardly any logic to pursuing the idea that christians/religious people bear any kind of moral/behavioural high ground. The entire history of christianity tends to counter that logic.

Mostly every prof. I've had on the subject has subscribed to the view that there was very likely a historical figure named Jesus. The thing is that we know very little about him, though what little non-christian evidence exists points to him as being a likely illiterate political rebel both involved in the revolt against Roman occupation as well as trying to reform judaism for the purpose of rebellion against the Empire. Religion and rebellion were very much connected during the period. From what we can see, his message was most specifically directed toward the Jews and was a rallying call to fight occupation and reform judaism as an accommodation.

Anything else written about his life is pretty much pure speculation. Highly unlikely that he was a philosopher of any kind. In the Greco-Roman and medieval Jewish tradition, this would have required literacy and he was likely not literate. Additionally, there is no evidence about his own beliefs, and much of the moral code later attributed to christianity was likely inspired by judaism or created after his death since the New Testament was pieced together over centuries also after his death.

It would have been unlikely that the Romans would have recorded much about his religious leanings. Christianity at that point wouldn't have been called christianity and would have been among a number of other cults present throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus himself would not have called it "christianity." Additionally, the supernatural factors within his life were added later, and were largely inspired directly by Mesopotamian mythology.

We still need to be careful when citing scholars like Tacitus in particular. Tacitus' works largely copies or his own versions of previous works rather than original material. They are useful in so far as they they've managed to preserve many works that would have been otherwise lost (Germania, Agricola etc.) He along with Pliny and Suetonius would have been moreso writing in the Roman tradition than recording what was ever known for certain. Remember that the Greco-Roman world had different ideas on truth, history and historical accuracy than we do today.

But their writings do suggest that at one point there was a Jesus of some sorts involved in the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation.