[Steve_Seattle]

"I’m pretty agnostic about a lot of things but I never have understood why atheists want to insist that there never was a Jesus."

I don't think most atheists claim that Jesus never existed, but that he is not who or what Christians claim he is. Some think he was an admirable man, so do not, and some think he was crazy.

[bkepley]

Maybe not most atheists but many do in my experience insist that there is no evidence he ever existed.

[NoCmpromiz]

I don't think most atheists claim that Jesus never existed, but that he is not who or what Christians claim he is. Some think he was an admirable man, so do not, and some think he was crazy.

C. S. Lewis said it well in Mere Christianity:

    I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great 
moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." This is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of 
things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or 
else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.

Lewis then adds the following comment:

    You can shut Him up as a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us 
not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.