When was Jesus born?

This is a re-post, apparently, because the billboards it mentions were erected in 2010. But it's a recent re-post, and it's the first I've seen of this video clip, anyway.

Besides, it's just as valid now as it was three years ago, not to mention being very appropriate for the week before Christmas.

Twelve years difference is quite a discrepancy, especially when we don't have any non-biblical sources for this at all. (Admittedly, we don't have any contemporary sources, biblical or not.) If the authors of the Gospels were this ignorant of Jesus' birth, why in the world would we think they'd be good evidence for miracles, especially given that they don't even claim to have witnessed such things themselves?

And the fact that we don't have the original manuscripts, but only copies of copies of copies made centuries later (by people who were attempting to promote their own particular religious beliefs), makes all this even harder to believe.

The fact that this stuff supposedly happened 2,000 years ago makes it less believable, not more. Sure, lots of people have believed it, and lots of people still do. But they don't have any good reason to believe it. For the most part, it's just what they've been taught to believe since infancy.