I wasnt referring to Jesus at all, I was referring to his disciples. If someone is asserting its all lies then it must have been perpetrated by them. They must have known for a fact that the whole thing was a lie. But it seems illogical to me for people to go willingly to their deaths to not only defend lies but to try to convince everyone else of them. People go to their deaths all the time for beliefs, even if false, by that's not the assertion, the assertion is they went to their deaths defending what they knew to be false.
And there is indeed a problem claiming you've spoken to God, that's why I find Islam so unfounded. But Jesus didn't just make that claim, he claimed in fact to be God and provided evidence for it, performing impossible feats and conquering death. You choose to believe it's all either lies or this group of people were completely delusional. I've already said why I don't think its lies, so we're left with delusional. But it is interesting that this apparent group of complete lunatics, who must have been utterly insane to believe someone walked on water, or came back from the dead, these same people managed to come up with such profound wisdom.
Just to clarify an different opinion
"I was referring to his disciples" - again the actual evidence for them is pretty sparse, and even then contradictory. But all good "heros" needs disciples - who is he going to talk to to "explain" stuff if he doesn't. Take the Thomas character - he supposedly witnessed all these miracles, physics defying stuff, walking on water, food appearing from nowhere - yet still doubted which required a hand in a wound post resurrection? That's a fictional device to get across a message if ever I saw one - provide a character to "doubt" to "prove" the reality of the situation - pretty textbook stuff really. I'd really advise reading "the hero's journey" by J. Campbell which delves into story telling from infancy - it's not a religious or anti religious book at all, but it does demonstrate how stories are constructed to get messages across and elicit emotions in the readers or listeners.
I do agree it's entirely possible for some people, who professed a belief in a story, to die for those beliefs. The evidence that that can happen can still be seen today. But, ironically, I don't recall the Bible actually tells the story of any disciple dying for his belief - correct me if I am wrong here.
"They must have known for a fact that the whole thing was a lie" - As I suspect they didn't exist "they didn't" as they are part of the mythology. Take "Peter" as another example. It actually means "rock", that's just too much of a narrative coincidence when you consider the "you are my rock" speech.
It's only much later than the supposed events that you start to hear about Christians - mostly fighting among themselves as to what the "Truth" actually is. Marcionisn for instance understood it that the Jesus spirit overthrew the Yawh spirit as the ruling god, who they viewed as an evil entity. The Ebionites considered Jesus to be fully human and completely rejected Pauls writtings. Docetism considered everything to be an illusion and everything also happened in a spiritual way.
It's really obvious that there is nothing from the time that cements anything so all we are left with are the beliefs of a wide variety of sects that are wholly differing. Exactly the sort of thing you would expect from a myth based narrative. That one particular sect won out isn't really material as all it needed was the backing of a ruling class - hello Constantine and co.
So to answer your question - no I don't think the disciples were delusional, I think they are part of the narrative that was built up. Again, possibly with a real central figure (preacher/rabbi) or composite of such figures but so embellished as to render identification of any core person impossible - the story tellers did have to try and work in as many "prophecies" as possible (especially Mathew) .
