>>513459563
It's not even a theory worth entertaining, as it leaves out the degree of persecution.
It was all about sacrificing your life be it death or living.
The "thousands" of Christians who died for their witness/experience based beliefs (WEBB), like the Holy Spirit and so on.
The atheist response to this as usual is to disingenuously equivocate beliefs that people died for with WEBB that Christians died for.
Both are martyrdom but you obviously can't use the former as if it's the same as the later.

It's a classic case of the fallacy of equivocation.