There is evidence that the Jesus miracle acts really happened, so it's not unreasonable to believe it.
But you miss the point.
I am not claiming that the Jesus story is made up.
I am claiming that the story being a made-up fiction is certainly a possibility for which believers have a burden to counter.
It remains possible that it's just a made up story.
One might reason that it's made up, based on the premise that anything containing miracle claims probably is made up, which you can make an argument for. But it's also a reasonable possibility that the Jesus story is true, because there is no evidence that it was "made up" -- in contrast to most miracle legends for which we have evidence that they were made up -- and there are extra sources attesting to the Jesus miracle events.
So, even if most miracle claims are unreasonable because the stories were obviously made up, the Jesus case is at least one exception to this rule.
There is an advantage to it being a made-up story in that we would not have to rewrite any of the laws of the universe in order to explain it.
No, it would not likely require that the "laws of the universe" be rewritten. But it might require a rewriting or revision of some textbooks.
The part that would have to be rewritten, or revised or reinterpreted, would be those parts of "science" which say that miracle events are proven to be impossible, or are by definition impossible. But good science does not make arrogant claims like this. Good science leaves it open and just says we don't know, and that one has to be skeptical of all such claims.
But further, there is no evidence that the Jesus miracle stories were made up, so the only reason to consider them to be made up is the fundamental premise that miracle events can never happen. This is really the only argument against the Jesus miracle claims.
There may be good reason to doubt certain miracle elements in the gospel accounts, or consider some of it as a result of mythologizing, but this is not evidence that the entire miracle narrative is made up. Rather, the existence of some mythologizing, especially later legend-building such as we see in the 2nd- and 3rd-century apocryphal gospels, is an indication that there must have been an original early legend based on real events that happened in fact and which served as a starting point to which later fictions became attached.
I.e., there had to be something real in the first place for the later legends to build on. And the best possibility of this real something is the basic healing miracles, which easily explains how Jesus became deified so quickly, and also the resurrection. With this basic beginning, we can see how the mythologizing process easily got started. But without this as the beginning point, there is no explanation as to how the original myth-making process got started.
(I know some posters here have pretended to offer an explanation, but their scenarios make no sense.)
I have not said anything about what anyone else should hold as a position.
Can anyone say to another what they should believe or hold as a position or claim is the truth? Should no one ever judge what another thinks, or suggest it's wrong to believe that or to think that?
At a certain point it is OK to accuse another of having an unreasonable belief, if the belief comes into the discussion. In the case of miracle claims, the believer has a certain obligation to give a legitimate reason for believing it.
It's appropriate to criticize it as unreasonable if the believer claims it's true but there is no evidence that the miracle event ever really happened. That it's taught by some religion is not evidence that it's true. If a believer insists that this miracle happened only because his religion teaches it, but there is no evidence that it really ever happened, then this is unreasonable and it's OK to judge that as an unreasonable belief or criticize it as unreasonable.
The Jesus miracle acts are not in this category, because there is evidence that they happened. So instead of criticizing this as being an unreasonable belief, one can only say that the evidence is not strong enough as to require every reasonable person to believe it. There is an element of uncertainty which leaves it in doubt as to what really happened. But that the event really happened is one reasonable possibility.
But this cannot be said for most miracle claims, because there is no evidence for them, or virtually no evidence.
