rationalskepticism.org

RealityRules wrote:

Shrunk wrote: ... My thoughts on this matter can be summed up as "Where there's smoke, there's fire," and there seems to me to be enough smoke to make it, on balance, more probable than not that some guy named Jesus existed about whom a lot of tall tales ended up being written. And, despite appearances to the contrary, I'm really not sufficiently interested in the subject to delve into it much more deeply. The mythicists set themselves up for a much tougher task, so it's only to be expected that they would lose out. If there were scholars who set out to prove that Jesus did not have an accountant named Bernie, they'd have an even more difficult time of it.

From my admittedly limited perspective, it just seems that no one is entitled to stake a position too firmly on this question, and it puzzles me that so many people do so regardless ...

You're 'begging the question'.

One might also say, with respect to mythicism, "Where there's smoke, there's fire", especially considering the name Joshua/Jesus has a reasonable history of prophecy in Judaism & early Christianity. There is a lot of attention around the prophecies centered on Joshua/Jesus the high priest, son of Jozadak, in Zechariah chapters 3 and 6 and how these, along with other OT passages, such as some in Isaiah, Daniel, and the books of Samuel, may have been the basis on which to create new [testament] narratives.

Expecting the mythicists to 'lose out' is a 'confirming the consequent' fallacy.