Furthermore, just a reality, some people care more about true statements and critical analysis than whether it’s useful or hurts someone’s feelings.

This isn’t a debate about religious dogma. MacDonald doesn’t think Jesus was god or supernatural or anything. This is about mainstream theories of historicity, i.e. entirely plausible, mundane Jesuses.

MacDonald does have his own peculiar moral agenda that he “needs” his Jesus to have existed to support; but that’s as close as it gets. He isn’t using religion to get there, but the purported tools of objective historical analysis. In other words, his Jesus cannot be found in the Bible. It has to be “reconstructed.”

Have you considered just trolling them by stating a position opposite of what you really think, so that in their attempts to discredit everything you say they’ll end arguing their way into your true position?

Immanent is correct. “Existing or operating within; inherent.”

That work is actually going to be quite valuable, akin to Swanson’s series on comparative textual criticism. It definitely does represent MacDonald’s life work, as it will merge in a reference-accessible form all his Hellenic and Jewish mimetic work, with summaries and bibliography for each item.

That doesn’t mean every argument to every conclusion in it will be sound. But it will all be useful.

(a) There is no evidence for anything you just said; including (b) that Paul was a misogynist. Every letter and passage cited to that effect is a forgery. Later Christians corrupted the writings of Paul to be misogynistic.

You need to base your beliefs on evidence; solid, peer-reviewed evidence. Not wishes and dreams and the fancies of amateur speculators. So see the difference look over On the Historicity of Jesus. It requires accepting that most things we want to know, we can’t know. And what we can know is very little. Certainly not any of what you just said.

Not only 3% of GDP, but literally one third of biblical studies schools mandate dogma statements (their faculty and students must agree never to challenge the dogmas of the religion, in writing).

This is like an astronomy field awash with astrologers holding almost all the strings of money and power. And then insisting astrology is true “because the consensus.” Even the agnostics quake.

It matters because people use that belief to justify all manner of plagues upon themselves and humankind.

See: What’s the Harm.