First of all there is proof Jesus existed in the Talmud, the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus . . . .
You need to update your research, as other scholars have. Using modern analytical methods, the latest verdict is that those passages in Josephus's writings are apocryphal forgeries inserted at a later date.
The fact that Christians still exist even though at one time were persecuted for their faith and that Judaism still rejects Jesus as their Messiah should be adequate proof of his historicity.
Many people believe many untruths. That seems to be one of the traits of our species. This is a place of science and you have misused the word "proof" where "evidence" is the appropriate term. There is nowhere near enough evidence to "prove" beyond a reasonable doubt (the standard of science) that Jesus was a real historical person. Considering that the Romans were consummate recordkeepers, it's very suspicious that there are no contemporary accounts of the so-called "miracles" attributed to him. That would have been big, entertaining news to the Roman citizens.
Christianity is not a metaphor it is meant to be a solution to a very complex dilemma.
Apparently you need to also review your notes from your courses in literature and psychology. Every religion on earth is a textbook example of a set of metaphors. This does not conflict at all with your own statement. Metaphors are very powerful tools for resolving dilemmas, although in many cases they may guide us to the wrong solutions.
That dilemma is mankind's continual disobedience to natural law, moral law and even personal conscience. More simply stated, we all disobey what we know to be wrong even if our consciences vary as to what we personally believe is wrong.
You also need to review your notes from your anthropology classes. Humans are a pack-social species that evolved to live in harmony and cooperation with a couple of dozen members of an extended-family tribe whom we had cared for and depended on since birth. In the Paleolithic Era when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers with no surplus food, during a lean year every other tribe was a pack of enemies who
needed to steal our food for survival. Since then we have invented agriculture and all the subsequent paradigm-shifting technologies such as civilization, metallurgy, industry and electronics, and there is now an abundance of food, but the few hundred generations of breeding since the Agricultural Revolution has not been enough time for natural selection to turn us from a pack-social species into a species of creatures who love and trust everyone else. There's still a caveman inside each of us, ready to spring into action on a bad day.
This is the
dilemma that morality, laws, religions, and all of our other artificial constructions try to resolve: we are pack-social creatures, attempting to live in an overlay of a herd-social society that we created for ourselves, in conflict with
our own nature.
What Christianity teaches is a reality that God who created all things . . . .
Once again, you display your ignorance of the concept of
metaphor. There is no respectable evidence of any shred of truth in the God myth. It's all hearsay that has been handed down for thousands of years, since long before science and scholarship were practiced and
argument from authority--now one of the most laughable fallacies--was accepted as evidence for truth.
I am not sure why this is such an offensive message to some.
This third-generation atheist can only speak for himself and his family, but it is not the message itself that we find offensive. After all (again speaking only for myself), I find great comfort and inspiration in the messages from other fictional sources, from the legends of the Indian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Norse and Native American gods, to the wisdom of Winnie the Pooh and Kermit the Frog.
My utter contempt for the monotheistic religions, that have been metastasizing across this helpless planet like a cancer epidemic, is that their pathetic one-dimensional model of the human spirit (everything we say, think, do or desire lies somewhere on an oversimplified linear scale with Good at one end and Evil at the other, instead of the 23-dimensional richness of the traditional religions) squeezes our complex psychology and culture into a paradigm that is simply incapable of handling the workload effectively.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam present some fine, inspiring stories, yet in practice in the real world they inspire their followers into orgies of unspeakable violence every few generations, which undo all the good they have ever done. Just the obliteration of the "heathen" civilizations of the Aztecs and the Incas--two of the only six independently created civilizations in all history--with their wealth of motifs, ideas and dreams, with the blessing of the Christian leaders, is a "sin" of such overwhelming cosmic proportions that the Children of Abraham will NEVER be able to satisfactorily atone for this loss, even if their execrable philosophies endure for another million years.
Monotheism is a plague on this planet and humanity will always be in peril of self-destruction so long as it exists--no matter how sweet and lovely the cute little fables in its holy books may appear to be.
) ensured that they became more interesting with each retelling. Even worse, because people back then had only a dim understanding of how the natural universe works, tall tales of supernatural phenomena did not conflict with what little they already knew, and so were easier to believe if presented by a good storyteller.