“I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1)
This is Paul. What he is telling us has him explicitly performing the same role as Muhammad in hallucinating Gabriel and Joseph Smith hallucinating Moroni. Jesus Christ is a supernatural being which Paul “experiences” through revelation, i.e. hallucination (let’s assume he’s not just lying).
Jesus is not a terrestrial figure. He is an other worldly being who appeared to Paul in a dream. He is, like Gabriel and Moroni, an angel-like being, a manifestation of supernatural personality.
Later, in order to gain greater legitimacy for the Christian cult (competition was fierce), Jesus was written into history (euhemerized), and a local history was invented around him. As a “real person” appearing before numerous “real witnesses”–none of whom wrote anything down nor can be verified as having even existed–and imagining an earthly setting (apart from all the things we know are impossible, such as raising the dead), the myth makers sought to manufacture the illusion of real world events among a superstitious population.
This is what is presented in the Gospels. They are obvious works of fiction. Christmas time is an opportunity to tell the truth about Jesus. There is no evidence that Jesus was a real person, and all the evidence we do have points to Jesus being a myth. And certainly the things he is said to have done–the miracles, for example–are false. People do not levitate without advanced technology based on science. And since there is zero evidence of supernatural power, and no logical necessity for its existence, even if we were to assume Jesus were an historical figure, we would have to admit, in addition to knowing nothing about him, that any appeal to his supernatural character is irrational.
And this is just as well, because the message of the Gospels is not the way forward if we believe in justice for real people in the present world.
freedom and reason 