Is faith the answer to cognitive dissonance?

The belief that these are facts and actual historical occurences is where blind faith comes in. For historical figures such as Jefferson and Shakespeare we have accounts from disinterested sources, and even the enemies of these figures. Not so with Jesus. The only accounts we have were written by followers several decades after the fact. Not only that, but these accounts contradict each other in ways that can not be ignored. You would think that dead people walking the streets after Jesus' resurrection would have made the local papers, or something. Jesus is also said to have appeared to hundreds, if not thousands, of people before the ascension. Not one of those supposed disinterested witnesses reported anything. Actually, it is very possible that Shakespeare stole some of his material from other playwrights (e.g. Christopher Marlowe). I have no dogmatic belief that Shakespeare did write Romeo and Juliet, although that is the best possibility as of right now. Absolutely not. He had a lot of help writing it. Also, the complaints listed in the DoI can be verified from several disinterested sources.

I equally doubt that every testimony given in court is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I would hazard a guess that more than one person has gone to jail for perjuring themselves on the stand.What we look for in testimonials is motive. What does the person have to gain for making a specific claim? The source is just as important as the actual statement.

And here is where it gets even hairier. With the gospels we can't even authenticate the authorship nor an we cross examine the author. On top of that, much of the gospels are made up of second hand accounts (i.e. heresay). Now if this were all related to a mundane historical fact we could overlook some of these problems and be fine with knowing that the claims may not be true. However, we aren't talking about anything mundane here. We are talking about a deity become man who comes back to life and is the sole key to the afterlife. That is anything but mundane. Surely one needs something better than second hand accounts of questionable authorship with no means of verification.

We have way more evidence that Shakespeare was the author of these works than Luke being the author of the Gospel of Luke."Support for William Shakespeare as author rests on two main pillars of evidence: testimony by his fellow actors, and by his fellow playwright Ben Jonson in the First Folio, and the inscription on Shakespeare's grave monument in Stratford.[17] Title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official recordsthe type of evidence used by literary historians that Stratfordians believe is lacking for any other alternative candidateare also cited to support the mainstream view.[a][18] Despite this, interest in the authorship debate continues to grow, particularly among independent scholars, theatre professionals and a small minority of academics.[19]"
sourceBut even this amount of evidence, more than we have for the authorship of the Bible, is not enough to make it a fact.Also, the importance of Shakespeare's plays and poems have nothing to do with the author. They could have been written by a group of 20 unknown authors and still carry the same importance. Even more, the importance of Shakespeare's plays have nothing to do with their historical accuracy. They are fiction. The play "Julius Caesar" is renowned for the drama, not the history.