Because it's not about the person, it's about the Dharma, the teachings. Those exist with or without a historical Buddha, and that's what guides the practice.

Imagine that someone is showing you the moon by pointing at it. You want to look at the moon, not the finger. The Buddha is a finger pointing at the moon.

Enlightenment isn't about some mystical truth and seeing into the unknown. It's about stripping away the illusions that cloud the way we see this reality. Those stories about the Buddha are ways to illustrate some of those illusions and how others might have come to the realization. It doesn't matter if they really happened. A lot of them are so constructed that they are probably fake, at least to some degree.

One that really affected me was the 72 problems story (or some number lol, I only remember that it's not 99, because 99 problems is from that Jay-z song, but ultimately it doesn't matter how many problems "everyone has").

For the short version, a man goes to the Buddha because he heard he can help him with his problems. He complains about his farm not doing well, his wife nagging, his kids not respecting him, a whole slew of 72 or so problems, and for each one when he asks if the Buddha can help him with that, the Buddha tells him no. Finally he complains that he didn't help him with any problem and the Buddha says "everyone has 72 problems, but I can help you with your 73rd problem: the problem that you have problems. Problems are a fact of life, if you get so bent up about having problems, you're going to have a miserable life because there's always problems. Accept that the problems exist and you'll find peace." And then the guy was enlightened (in that specific aspect of life, since enlightenment isn't a global state but basically just means "learned a deep lesson").

I'd get annoyed at needing to deal with things. Still do sometimes; enlightenment isn't some magical state. But when I notice that that is bugging me, I just remember the 72 problems story and dismiss that 73rd problem from affecting my mood. Which also indirectly helps with the problems themselves, because if you're pissed about having to deal with stuff, you'll be less effective at dealing with them (especially if your mood rubs off on others or attracts trolls). It truly feels like understanding that enabled an easy mode on some aspects of life. If the whole story was made up, it doesn't undo that understanding or eliminate that easy mode.

Whereas I've known Christians who can't understand why atheists don't just go around murdering people because if they don't believe in the Bible, what's even the point of trying to be good?

Because it doesn't change the message at all. And if you follow a religion because you agree with its teachings, does the source really matter??

If you read somewhere you should be kind to others for betterment of the society. You said "that makes sense, I'll do it from now onwards", and you later learn it was a fantasy story and wasn't talking about real life, would you stop being kind? Now replace that with not actively hurting people.

This is why Christianity is so scummy. The only reason these shit heels “give back” is because they expect to he rewarded for it. Oh no, we can’t just be kind to be kind, we do it because we are promised something on the back end. Same energy and douchebags who record themselves donating to say the homeless. It’s all about what they get out of the transaction. A fucking pat on the back.

Also, there are now more Ikea catalogs published than the Bible, making Ikea the superior religion.

Since Ikea a famous for their meatballs, a part of the holy dish and body of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, our Holy Noodle is more real than the Christian god, or any other god.

In Julius Caesar a clock strikes three, and while they had hours (a fraction of the daytime, not a standard unit) they didn't have mechanical clocks.

But then while we know what happened to Julius Caesar based on historical accounts, even chronicles were politicized, which is why we don't know of Julia the Elder boffed half of Rome or was just the victim of slander. (Dramatists prefer she did while academics assume she was virtuous). So we know some of the details of the mass assassination of Julius Caesar but we only know some of the general details, which allows a lot of latitude in period recreations.

Jesus existed according to academics (based on third party accounts) but he might have just been an anti-establishment activist or a failed apocalyptic prophet. Not only did Jerusalem have those by the dozen but so did most satellites from which Rome demanded tribute. The miracles and matching Jesus up to fit the prophesies came later. Also Pontius Pilate loved crucifixion and had execution teams on standby where it was considered elsewhere in Rome a dire sentence for the worst of offenders. Pilate was the Roman equivalent of a hanging judge, so it was super-easy for a malcontent in Jerusalem to end up on the cross.

I haven't really heard that Jesus of Nazareth didn't exist as an argument against Christianity, just that he wasn't God and didn't to miracles/resurrection. There is a ton of exaggeration in all mythology texts, and some are just stories to illustrate a point. But of those that did have factual events, they are rarely a true telling.

Maybe some Israelites left Egypt during a particularly shitty time in Egypt. It is so easy to take a story of a smallish group of Israelites escaping slavery during a plague and being chased by some guards who gave up, and repeatedly embellish that story until God both hardened Pharaoh's heart and punished him for not doing right by His people (which number far more than could possibly have been living in Egypt at that time) by giving a series of plagues, and then wiping Pharaoh and his army out with a magical sea passage that closed on them. It's such a trope of all human storytelling it's been a joke for centuries.

Apply that to literally every story, think of the motivations behind those writing it, and you can get an amazing moral teacher becoming God.

But to the point of the meme, from the perspective of people in the future, there may have been a Peter Parker, but there's no reason to believe there was a Spider-man without more to go on than the comics. Likewise, religious texts.

• Be God
• Create humans
• Wipe out almost all life off earth in a flood because you’re not happy with the result

Yup, that’s what I call responsibility.

Well the Christians do, in my experience the Muslims are like "yeah, duh".