As far as Jesus goes, I'm not sure if he existed as a real person or not. I tend to think that he did exist, that he was a spiritual leader bringing teachings from the east to the middle-east, and his words threatened the religious power structure at the time, so he was executed. The Pharasies controlled the hearts and minds of the people, and he brought a message of communing with God outside of their strangle hold. Powerful people don't enjoy it when you poke holes in their boat.

It's my understanding that the teachings of Jesus, and his life, were recrafted into a new religion about 300 years after his execution. Stories were spin, tales were told, to create a new system of order. After all, without police cars, guns, cellphones, computers, how do you keep order within a city? Well, one method would be to tell everyone that if you don't live by a certain moral standard, you will burn forever when you die. And that if you do live by a certain moral standard, you will be rewarded with eternal bliss when you die.

I can't even fault people for fabricating religions. It makes sense simply from an organizational standpoint. Unfortunately it was clearly co-opted by greedy men who wanted power.

The teachings of Jesus are rather standard spiritual lessons that we can see across a lot of religions. Real person or not, re-written 100 times or not, the biblical allegory of the new testament does in fact have some solid lessons.

I don't follow the Christian religion. I'm ex-christian in fact. But "Jesus" had some fantastic lessons to teach, and there's some fascinating things hidden within that "Holy" tome.

And yeah, I'd have a beer with you any day.