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I would never argue Jesus didn't exist. He did. But he was a nobody executed without fanfare. That's not new atheism, that's the gospels. That's the whole point of the gospels. The meek preacher squashed unceremoniously by the pagan tyrants is actually the conquering king of Heaven.
I don't know whose position this is, but it's not mine, and it's not that of any halfway well-informed skeptic I'm familiar with. The story told by the gospels is probably broadly true. Jesus really was a 1st century apocalyptic prophet and faith healer who roamed the Judean countryside building up a following. He really did preach the coming judgment of God and the need for repentance and right-living. He really did butt heads with rival sects and local religious leaders. He really did carry out faith healings. He really did go up with his disciples to Jerusalem for passover (probably expecting the imminent inauguration of the kingdom). He really did cause a disturbance at the temple, which resulted in his arrest. He really was executed by Pontius Pilate. Some of his disciples really did have experiences that convinced them Jesus had been raised from the dead and exalted to Heaven. Where I differ is that I don't think the best explanation for these facts is that Jesus actually did rise from the dead.
Something that isn't one or two members of Jesus' religious movement with every incentive to believe and propagate this saying, "trust me bro."
The argument from martyrdom is weak. There's little evidence that anyone was particularly interested in hunting down Christians in the early years. Frankly it hardly matters to me, since I don't think the disciples were lying, I think they genuinely believed Jesus had been raised.
A good demonstration of the cosmology of the NT is the story of the ascension. Jesus rises from the dead, and then he spends forty days with his disciples, before returning to Heaven. When the time comes for him to leave, he floats into the sky until a cloud takes him out of sight.
Most modern Christians, at least those who have given the matter any thought, will tell you that Heaven is not a place within the 3-D universe. It's maybe a parallel universe, or not a spatio-temporal location at all, but rather a kind of experience, or state of being. I believe the Catholic position is that Heaven is simply the experience of the human soul contemplating the presence of God.
On this model, there's no immediate reason why Jesus should float into the sky to get to Heaven. You can come up with reasons why he would return to Heaven that way, but it's not obvious why going into the sky should get one closer to a parallel universe, or the beatific vision, or whatever you like. If you step into the shoes of an educated first-century writer like Luke, then the reason Jesus floats into the sky is obvious. That's how you get to Heaven. It's past the air (the first Heaven) and past the stars and moon (second Heaven). The throne room of God is in the "third Heaven", a concept directly from Ptolemaic cosmology (Paul references it by name in 2 Corinthians 12:2 - 4). It's distant and glorious, but also a place with a definite spatio-temporal location, so Jesus can go there in his physical, flesh and blood body.
Of course, you can reconcile this with the modern understanding that celestial spheres don't exist. William Lane Craig for example, says that Jesus was "accommodating" the disciples. In other words, being God, he knew that Greek cosmology was false, and you don't have to float into the sky to get to Heaven, but because his disciples had the standard contemporary view of the cosmos, floating into the sky was the best way for him to get across to them that he was going back to Heaven. But this is just adding epicycles (a particularly appropriate term here), when a far simpler and more parsimonious explanation is available: this isn't something that actually happened, and the reason it fits so neatly into the Ptolemaic universe and so awkwardly into ours is because Luke, who wrote this story down, wrongly believed in celestial spheres.
Your hypothesis is that they all hallucinated the same thing, non-miraculously? Seems implausible to me.
To add on to @To_Mandalay's excellent points, no, most of us nonbelievers don't believe a bunch of Jesus' followers had a shared hallucination. This whole discussion is basically the "Lord, Lunatic, or Liar?" argument - the trilemma orginally formulated by C.S. Lewis that either Jesus was the Son of God, or else he was either a con-man or insane. (And Lewis and other Christian apologists then go on to write very convincingly about how unlikely it is that he was a liar or crazy, ergo, he must have actually been the Son of God.)
All of this assumes that eyewitness accounts from the 1st century should all be taken at face value. Hence you get the other popular argument, like @HlynkaCG's, pointing out that we have more documentary evidence of Jesus than of Hannibal Barca, etc. Okay, all true. But eyewitness accounts of supernatural events by large numbers of more or less credible people are very common throughout history. Either lots of miracles have happened (yet somehow never on camera since the advent of photography), many of which are not congruent with a Christian cosmology, or yes, a few people can convince themselves they really, really super-for-real experienced something, and many other people can then be convinced that really happened (and if they didn't experience it themselves at the time, they can convince themselves they did afterwards).
This doesn't make Jesus' followers stupid, liars, or crazy either. It just makes them like any other people throughout history who can convince themselves of almost anything through strong emotions and motivated reasoning. Do you literally believe anyone who claims they saw an angel or a demon? Do you think every person who claims to see an angel or demon either (a) saw an angel or demon; (b) is making it up; (c) is schizophrenic? Because I think there is an option D: people with strong enough religious beliefs, who are otherwise intelligent and rational, can convince themselves they have experienced something that didn't actually happen. I will compare, for example, Christian testimonials about personally experiencing God in various ways - ranging from the rather abstract "felt God speak to them" in their hearts to literal visions of going to heaven and talking to Jesus. I don't think these people are all lying or crazy. But if you talk to many other religions believers (particularly Muslims), you will hear very similar testimonials. So, either all religions really are one and God speaks equally to Christians and Muslims? (Despite the fact that neither Christians nor Muslims believe that's possible.) Or, the other explanation I typically get from both sides: our visions are real, theirs are Satan deceiving them.
This is why I don't think I need to "disprove" that Jesus' followers actually saw him rising to heaven, or walking around alive after he was crucified.
Yeah, I'm pretty skeptical of most alleged instances of people saying God spoke to them. I guess I'm more impressed by the appearing to multiple people (eleven, then 500) simultaneously, which it isn't obvious to me how that could happen.
Edit: This did only allegedly happen, of course, but it is alleged by multiple seemingly independent, sincere, sources.
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"Lunatic, liar, lord" also leaves out the option of "legend" - that the texts are not accurate retellings of history surrounding the historic figure of Jesus of Nazareth.
It's something you run into particularly with accounts of the lives of kings and hagiographies - a later writer might make up most of the biography of an earlier saint, but doing so would not necessarily be seen by the author or the contemporary audience as dishonest or fictional, particularly if it helped convey what they saw as the intended message or moral of their story. Illustrating the mercy of Saint x of y and how it should be emulated via a contributing a story of how he forgave an enemy was more important than whether that narrative accurately matches real life events, whether their details were available or not. History in the sense of attempting to research and reconstruct the past with as much accuracy to real life events as possible was not how writing about past figures and events was always understood, nor the objective of many authors.
Jesus was pretty close chronologically, though, and the people seemed to be sincere in their beliefs.
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No, my hypothesis is that a few of Jesus' disciples had grief hallucinations (hallucinations of dead loved ones in otherwise mentally healthy individuals are extremely common, particularly when that loved one has died a sudden and violent death--in a large group of people, it would be strange if some of them didn't have grief hallucinations) that caused them to believe Jesus had been raised. These were not collective experiences. IMO there's little reason to think all twelve disciples had Christophanies, let alone all at the same time. If, say, Peter had a post-mortem vision of the risen Jesus and managed to convince a few other people, that would be enough to get the ball rolling. I think the stories in the gospels about Jesus sitting down to eat with the disciples in group settings and letting Thomas stick his fingers in his wounds are probably later embellishments.
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