Though I'm a firm atheist, and I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, my belief in the historicity of Jesus is a little difficult to shake off, and perhaps it is not necessary to do so. Over the decades, the events in the so-called New Testament, and the personalities of Jesus's disciples seem too fully painted to be mere fictions.
Though I continue to believe that Jesus was never alive again after he was executed, the horror and the fear of the group in the hours leading up to the crucifixion seem very real. And if I do believe in the devastation of Jesus's friends and supporters in those pre-crucifiction hours, that should not detract from my qualifications as an atheist. And atheists need not feel obliged to ridicule 'believers' as the latter ponder the horrors of those two days. If it were the case that Jesus had not a speck of divinity, the horror of that group would have been all the more real.
There is no doubt that Jesus was a great leader and teacher, which alone makes his execution a tragedy. So were the executions of Stephen, Paul, Peter, in fact the deaths of all those first century christian martyrs were tragedies. Atheists tend to laugh at those who mourn those tragedies; it's somewhat inexplicable. But not sacrilegious, as we atheists can agree. I mean, when a friend dies, we comfort his widow and his children; we hardly ever ridicule them saying, well, he wasn't the Messiah; curb your excitement!
I blogged on Bach's Matthew Passion recently.
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