Where'd Christianity Really Come From?

I'm reading The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur. This is quite an informative read for those interested in a fascinating new controversy about the origins of the Christian religion.

I'm an atheist and I find it quite the page flipper. His theory, of which he provides an amazing amount of compelling evidence, is that Christianitys ideas and stories really came from religions centuries and perhaps millennia before the time that Jesus Christ was supposedly born. In particular, Egyptian theology bears startling resemblances to many parts of the gospels - things he said and things he did and the entire crucifixion and ressurection story. In fact, Jesus Christ did not likely exist and was a deliberate fabrication by the early Church in order to "dumb" down theology.

Unfortunately, Harpur, a former Anglican priest, cannot take these conclusions to their most obvious conclusion - that God himself has never existed.