I used to feel the same way. I found Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle interesting, but felt that it was kind of far fetched, and was willing to accept the expert consensus that there was a historical Jesus. That all changed when I read Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth which laid out the argument for there being a historical Jesus for a lay audience. I generally like Ehrman's work, but my reaction to that book was: "That's It!? That flimsy evidence is the source of the expert consensus on the historicity of Jesus?". It was a real let down, and made me reconsider my dismissal of the whole idea of mythicism. Now I am of the opinion that it is probably impossible to really say with any certainty one way or the other, but I lean toward mythicism being slightly more likely.
Now, as far as Carrier's book goes, I found the information in it fairly interesting, but I don't think his statistical analysis is very solid. That sort of Bayesian Analysis just doesn't work well when you have such scant amounts of data to work with.
