I am not aware of any statistics that would warrant the use of the word "most". If Christ did die on the cross, he did not last very long.
What do you mean by he did not last very long? The Christ myth acceptance is quite a marginalized perspective on the historical facts. More people who are interested in researching if Christ died on the cross will come to the conclusion that he actually did die on the cross. If you do not you simply have a vast task of explaining away a lot of things. No one of yet has refuted the facts that there was a Historical Christ who was persecuted and died a humiliating death.
I find that those who do not believe that Christ existed have no basis for this thinking. They either do not care about his existance, which is a different matter which does not highlight the fact that he existed or not, or they simply think he did not exist because it is left up to belief, which is also not an excuse because they are unwilling to research.
For those who disbelieve that Christ actually died on the cross I like to hear their reason why. If they say there is no proof this is not a reason because there is tons of proof to sift though. What proof do you disagree with? It is not an excuse to say, tell me the proof because this is a lazy way, you simply want to be spoonfed and then critique everything with, well it can mean anything, I'm not going to make a decision as to which way it tends towards I will just say it could be anything and everything is still left up to your own belief. I think this is a passive way to live your life.
I'd treat studying Christ serious, there are so many clues to finding where he is, they all directly but push you in a direction for you to research through a particular path until you can look at all of the bits of information and finally a solid case for Christ starts to emerge. But do you know this is not necessary for most followers of Christ. This path is a very intellectually laborious task which would make finding your way to Christianity quite difficult for most. I think looking at the messages Christianity gives is important, it is a unique one amongst all religions, why is it unique is an important thing to research. I think the easiest way to research religions for most is to simply believe that they are all correct and then weigh up which one you think is best. Here we have to see what factors helped make our decision, which people with more wisdom on the topic have you talked with and debated questions you have thought about? If everything has been done on your own I really doubt you have researched into matters well enough.
Proving Christ died on the Cross is not so difficult, but proving he Resurrected is a little more. This is not to say that you cannot come to the conclusion that Christ actually did rise. I found an interesting way to try to prove the Christ Resurrection was trying to explain the effects Christianity had on the early Jewish Culture in two ways, in ways that the Christ Resurrection was a scam and in a way that the Christ Resurrection was a fact. You find that it is incredibly confusing to see it in the light that the Resurrection was a scam, how can we explain the early Christian martyrdom, or such a powerful change in the Jewish Culture which spread all over so much so that the Roman authorities found it influential enough to adopt the Christian religion in their own model.
It is wrong to think that these Early Christians where delusional because God was the most important thing to Jews. So explaining the things these people did becomes very difficult and confusing if they were not encouraged by the Resurrection. They must have realised Christ was the Messiah because they could reference his works to the prophecy in Old testament which spoke of the Son of God.
So, if we initially establish that that Christ did die on the cross, then we will accept that there were a lot of followers of Christ who would have witnessed the fact that their master had died. How did they manage to continue on if their Master had remained dead? It would just highlight the end of Christianity, it would have died like all the other cults, with their leader dying and snuffed out of any more influence on the people.
Christianity proclaims that Christ actually was killed and rose from the dead. What a smack in the mouth to most people. What a crazy thing to say! Why do some Christians feel the need to have a torture device hanging around their necks? (although the cross we use today resembles little of the early Christian cross which was more like a tau sign). There are strange rituals in Christianity where people drink the blood of the master and the devour body of the master! Cannibals!
These early church Christians where doing crazy things did they all of a sudden forget their reverence for God? Did all of those of early day Jews turn on their 1000 year old ancestors religion and follow a Christ, eating his body, drinking his blood, dying in the water being baptized in his name, because he had died on a cross and not rose? It seems strange, very strange if Christ had not risen. How on earth can so much change on a lie? Why didn't a lie like this come earlier and confuse more people? Why couldn't more of these lies happen in the past?
There where many cults before Christianity, all with their own promises, own false prophets, there where false Messiahs who gathered a lot of believers, but all these uprisings throughout Jewish or Roman history where wiped out. Christianity is the one that remained out of all of them, and it remained because of its REAL impact it had on the Early Christian followers.
The power the first hand and second hand witness to the Resurection even flows through into modern day as powerfully as it ever did, even though we have more places devoid of Christian knowledge than ever before, we have even more faith in Christ than ever before too. There is a huge amount of reinforcement to my faith in Christ when I logically determined that the Historical Christ is in fact the same as the Christ of Faith. It is still an ongoing research, I probably never will end, but the more I do the stronger the case for Christ becomes.
Topic: Christianity - Plague of the MIND