I was talking to a professor at my university about this and he had an interesting rationale. Although Jesus has been the most influential person in people's day to day lives for centuries arguably someone like James Watt was much more influential in our day to day lives in the modern age. How different your life would be without Watt and how much the world has changed in such a short amount of time since the industrial revolution is probably more important to your day to day life than religious influence. Now Historically I'm sure Christianity in some way affected the Industrial Revolution, but if we play that game then we wouldn't call Jesus the most influential and we'd instead have to go back further to who influenced the eventual creation of Christianity instead of Jesus himself.
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