Doh!

All will become obscure.

In the meantime:

Click to tweet: http://clicktotweet.com/d7u65 .  I've done a casual survey of atheist belief in the historicity or otherwise of Jesus.  There are many flaws in this piece of work, of course, but it's still interesting to see anecdotal opinions on it.  I would also welcome thoughts about how to improve this - i have a few ideas myself, but right now, this is what i've got.

A few months back, i made this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ufogQ70Yk&list=PLGWy7AFv1dkJYStG53TEHrpY67AoSJvnr&index=1 - which is about whether Jesus existed.  In it, i made the claim that many atheists do not believe Jesus to have been a historical figure, but that this is an overstatement.  On the discussion, which i suggest you look at, i was challenged to produce evidence for this claim and i quoted a couple of names.  However, clearly it would be helpful at least to try to produce evidence one way or another to it, so i proceeded to attempt to do so.

I asked the following question in three places:

"I had a comment on a YT video just now asserting that my claim that many atheists see Jesus as never having existed is false. My impression, from here at least, is that whereas he may or may not have existed, quite a lot of atheists do in fact make such a claim - that he was not a historical character at all. This also applies to atheist friends of mine, so it's not just a posture people pretend to have for Y!A R&S purposes. Moreover, that whole Horus - mystery religion - Zeitgeist thing and the coincidences between different figures in various religions would certainly seem to suggest that the Jesus idea is more an archetype or a borrowed notion than an actual person. So, what do you think? Would you say Jesus existed (and i don't mean the Jesus of the Bible, just some bloke called Yeshua around which loads of made up stories built up &c) or not?"

First of all, i asked it here and you can see the answers for yourself if you like:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnWY.bAYbaIRpDly3mXz4orsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20130601013153AA2Ev8c

I also asked it on Facebook in two different groups, namely a pro-secular group and a group of people generally interested in religious and spiritual issues.  You're going to have to take my word for the answers there, but they proved to be very interesting and i thought i'd share them with you out of interest.

The flaws in this include: 

* The Yahoo Answers question may have been answered by people claiming to be atheist but who are in fact intending to mislead people into thinking they're atheist to convince people that many atheists do in fact believe Jesus to be a historical character.

* The sample sizes are very small.

* The people answering are self-selected.

Nonetheless, the opinions expressed are of great interest and i appreciate people contributing.  Thanks to everyone.

Tags:  god, atheism, jesus, christ, myth, survey, atheists, opinion, historical, jesus myth, horus, zeitgeist, sample, Yahoo Answers, fireball, religion and spirituality,

I thought i'd include a list of tags at the bottom.  Maybe i should do that more, though there are fewer than usual in this case.

I realise there are flaws in this survey, of course.  Analysing them and improving it is another matter.

I thought about making another pregnancy vlog this morning, as i may have mentioned yesterday, but haven't.  The problem was that it's getting quite difficult to do what i need to do to "get there", and i feel rather inhibited about it.  However, come Thursday morning, i'll be able to fit it in and be inspired by what's due to happen later that day in Birmingham.