Atheist Memes

That’s a long way to go in very little time - that’s only maybe 3-4 degrees away from the original source. Not nearly long enough for a mythical figure to develop organically

It went down in 79AD, a fully 43-46 years after the supposed events and at least 41.5 to 39 years after Paul began his missionary trips across the Roman Empire. To be clear you are arguing a strawman. I believe Paul was real and I believe James was real. I think it was a con job. This wasn't a myth that organically made itself, this was centuries of Jewish legends/stories/culture that was hijacked.

Also I asked for contemporary source not hearsay "3-4" times removed.

You can dispute the details, but someone must’ve been the figurehead at the very least.

Sure they had a mythical figurehead. It would explain why the Romans left them alone for decades after the supposed events. They were running a mystery-cult / charity organization and were saying that their leader had already been killed. Also would explain why Paul didn't know pretty much anything about the details.

The gospels themselves hint at the events being staged to some extent by a small group spreading an ideology according to a literal plan - the public events literally start with Jesus’s cousin gathering support for the movement, and then Jesus goes around recruiting specific people as apostles

Could be. I admit I hadn't thought of that. I promise to look into it. I assumed that they were sorta reverse engineering the "known" events. Building a narrative after the fact, a retrocon.

The Romans also kept records - there’s a lot of corroborating evidence for certain events spread too far and wide for a pre-information age society to fabricate. Even things like his birthdate - I think they’ve been able to narrow it down to a few days in July, during the census, where we had accounts of a temporary new star in the sky

And those records don't show anyone by that name in that city or being crucified. As for the star thing keep in mind the Gospel writers were multiple decades later well enough time to fit the data to the narrative. The census is a classic example of this. It was known that a census had been done around that time it was also "known" that Jesus was from Nazareth but was supposed to be from Bethlehem so the census is given for the reason.

Even the papers that are given clickbait-y headlines like “historians dispute the existence of Jesus” generally dispute certain aspects, there was almost certainly a historical figure named Jesus who was killed by the Romans for inciting a resistance movement

I don't care about consensus or other writers. I care about evidence. Please present it. You gave me evidence that there were Christians decades later, which is not what I asked for.