What is interesting about your question is that it assumes the story of Jesus conveyed in, for example, Mark, Luke and Matthew can be meaningfully connected to "the similar figures who were worshipped prior to the arrival of Christianity". To this point, you have tossed out a lot of names of pre-Christian religious figures (Zeus, Poseidon, Attis, Mithras, Osiris) and, oddly, none of them are god-men, and their stories can be connected to the story of Jesus only in the broadest terms. For example, Mithra (who, in my opinion, has the best chance of providing your case) does not have a human mother even in the late Roman form of his worship (which would have to be the basis of his connection to Jesus, right?) but a divine mother (Isis, or the Persian Anahita, or perhaps even the older Persian goddess Atargis [? - I think that's the right spelling; I haven't had to make this argument in almost 5 years]) who was a virgin -- very much like the relationship between Attis and Cybele.
What is worse for the case with Mithra, though, is the categorical absence of any Mithric literature which resembles the Gospels -- there's no basis to draw a genetic relationship because of the massive gap between the kinds of literature we are reviewing. Let me make this point clearly: in the best case for the advocates of Mithra as a model for Christ, there were verbal tales and ceremonial prayer/chants of Mithra which were passed down among acolytes, but they were not written textsuntil after the composition of the Gospels. As a source for this assertion, I would point the reader to the work of one of the chief advocates of the Christ/Mithra connection -- Franz Cumont, the father of 20th century Mithra studies. To be sure, he identifies this problem and never deals with it.
Additionally, if you take your thesis seriously, you have to address the radical departure Christian writings take from the religious writings made at the same time. While some exceptions may exist, I cannot find any examples of cultic literature prior to Christian religious literature which is written as historical narrative or prose: prose was reserved for historical and philosophical discourse, while poetry and structured verse was the genre for religious exposition. This is particularly true of Greek literary style. If you have examples of non-poetic religious texts which influenced the composition of the NT documents, I'd be interested in seeing them.
With all that expressed, I agree with Paul on this matter: there is no doubt that if there was no Jesus, and no resurrection, we Christians are the most pitiable of men. The liberal belief -- like the positions of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan -- that you can take the narrative character Jesus and make something out of him which makes life meaningful is an ahistorical view, and frankly an atheist view.
This is centuri0n, aka Frank Turk, who has been an internet apologist for about 10 years and has never really gained anything for himself through it but a handful of friends and a lot of ill-will. Most people, honestly, do not like to argue with him because he doesn't know how to let it go. He's a blogger of some minor note, and he's a "calvinist".
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