Challenge to atheists: I find your lack of faith disturbing!

[Confused Ape]

Paul claims to have met the risen Christ, and he makes the explicit claim that the risen Christ appeared before 500 Christians at one time. One deluded person may have an hallucination, but 500 at once? All the disciples? All the apostles too? Mary and Mary? What would make your theory more credible is if one of the disciples or one apostle came out and said "hey these guys are deluded" - did that ever happen? Heck, not even someone from the laity of the period said it.

Just because Paul claimed these things doesn't automatically make them true. How do we know that Paul even made the claim about 500 Christians? Maybe the story about Jesus's resurrection grew in the telling and that's how it ended up.

A very famous story which grew in the telling is the Angel of Mons. This is an in-depth analysis on the Military History Online site.

Smoke Without Fire: A re-examination of the Angel of Mons

During World War One there was a widespread belief in Britain that some form of supernatural intervention saved allied troops during the retreat from Mons. Since the war this event, generally known as the “Angel of Mons” has been variously used as evidence of supernatural intervention in combat, an example of a collective hallucination or as an urban myth unwittingly originated by a piece of fiction.

and

Working for a British newspaper at the time was Arthur Machen, a Welsh writer of popular gothic horror stories.

On 29th September 1914 a short story by Machen called The Bowmen appeared in the Evening News. Set during the battles at Mons the story told of a group of soldiers of the BEF fighting desperately against overwhelming German attacks. One of the British soldiers unwittingly summoned the spirit of St George and, just as it seems that they can no longer hold out;

“… he saw before him, beyond the trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like men who drew the bow, and with another shout their cloud of arrows flew singing and tingling through the air towards the German hosts.”

In the story, thousands of Germans are killed by the ghostly archers, and the attack is turned back.

The Bowmen was not specifically labelled as fiction, and potentially confusingly another piece in this edition of the newspaper was titled “Our Short Story”. However, given the style and format of the piece, it’s difficult to believe that it could have been read as anything but fiction. And this generally seems to have been the case. Contrary to subsequent claims, the notion of supernatural assistance coming to the rescue of the BEF did not instantly seize the British popular imagination after publication of The Bowmen. The only immediate response was that Machen was contacted by the editors of two specialist publications - The Occult Review and the spiritualist magazine Light. Both asked whether The Bowmen was based on a true story? Machen assured them that it was simply a piece of fiction. For more than six months newspapers made no mention of ghostly forces assisting British troops at Mons, though several parish magazines reprinted The Bowmen as a piece of patriotic fiction.

And then -

On 3rd April 1915 a small English provincial newspaper, the Hereford Times, carried an article called “A Troop of Angels”. This appears to have been where the term Angel of Mons was first used in print. The article was a second-hand account originating from a story told by a Miss Marrable (described as "the daughter of the well-known Canon Marrable".) Miss Marrable had met two officers from the BEF "both of whom had seen angels which had saved their left wing from the Germans when they came right upon them during our retreat from Mons [1]."

The 24th April (23rd April is St George’s day) 1915 edition of Light magazine ran a similar story titled: "The Invisible Allies: Strange Story from the Front." Although not identical to the Hereford Times piece, this also claimed that supernatural forces had come to the aid of British forces at Mons. In May 1915 an article in the Occult Review stated that at Mons "those who could see said they saw 'a row of shining beings' between the two armies.[2]" It will be recalled that Light and The Occult Review were the two magazines which had contacted Machen in September 1914 to ask for confirmation that the The Bowmen was based on fact. His denial does not appear to have dampened their enthusiasm for the story.

Also in May 1915 a reprint of the Hereford Times article appeared in the All Saints Church Parish Magazine in Bristol (the April edition of the same magazine had included a reprint of The Bowmen). Although largely forgotten now, at the beginning of World War One parish magazines were widely read and influential. Reverend Gilson, editor of the All Saints magazine was quickly overwhelmed;

“…to find that our modest little parish magazine has suddenly sprung into almost world-wide notoriety; every post ... has brought letters from all over the country, not asking merely for single copies, but for dozens of copies, enclosing quite embarrassing numbers of stamps and postal orders, the more so since there were no more magazines to be had.”[3]

In June 1915 the story was mentioned in the sermon of the Reverend R. F. Horton. He said;

“… when soldiers and officers, who were in the retreat from Mons say they saw a batch of angels between them and the enemy…, no thoroughly modern man is foolish enough to disbelieve the statement or to pooh-pooh the experience as hallucination.”[4]

There's more -

In August 1915 The Occult Review published the first of a series of articles by a British Nurse, Phyllis Campbell, who had been stationed in field dressing stations near the front line in France and Belgium during the retreat from Mons. She claimed to have heard stories from wounded soldiers of supernatural entities helping British troops. Many of these stories were repeated in her book Back to the Front, published in 1915. These stories, or derivations from them, were repeated in newspapers and parish magazines and used in sermons across the UK. A small number of eyewitnesses came forward to give first-hand testimony. One of the best known, Private Robert Cleaver of the 1st Cheshire Regiment gave to newspapers a detailed account of Angels he had seen at Mons and swore to the truth of this under oath. The Angel of Mons was frequently cited as evidence that God was on the side of the Allies. By late summer 1915 it was "unpatriotic, almost treasonable, to doubt it"

When people looked into it after the war,however, all the proof melted away like snow.

However, those who examined the evidence quickly found that contemporaneous first-hand accounts were very difficult to locate. The Imperial War Museum, repository for a vast array of documents from the period noted that "to pursue the supporting stories to source is to make a journey into a fog" [8] What appeared to be reliable testimony often proved worthless on closer examination. For example, following publication of his account of seeing the Angels, Private Robert Cleaver became mildly famous and his story was quoted in a number of newspapers and other publications. It was also used as the central piece of supporting evidence in a book which set out to prove the reality of the Angels.[9] However, on investigation it was found that Cleaver was not inducted into the Army until late August 1914 and did not arrive in France until 22nd September – four weeks after the end of the battle at which he claimed to have been present! [10]

Nurse Phyllis Campbell was also challenged to provide details of any of the soldiers from who she claimed to have heard of the angels. She was unable to do so, but claimed in justification that troops had been ordered not to tell of their experiences at Mons. However, no other nurses or sisters who had treated the wounded from Mons and the Marne could recall hearing similar stories.

So back to Arthur Machen.

Arthur Machen maintained that The Bowmen was at the root of belief in supernatural intervention at Mons. He believed that his original story about ghostly archers at Mons had gradually evolved and been embellished to become the Angel of legend. In August 1915 he re-published the story in an anthology, and included in the preface a clear statement that The Bowmen was fictional and had no basis in fact. He went on;

“It began to dawn on me that if I had failed in the art of letters, I had succeeded, unwittingly, in the art of deceit. This happened, I should think, some time in April, the snowball of rumour that was then set rolling has been rolling ever since, growing bigger and bigger, till it is now swollen to a monstrous size.”[13]

Although the anthology which included The Bowmen quickly sold out, Machen’s denial had little effect on belief in the reality of the Angel. However, over time his view has become more generally accepted. Most recent accounts of the Angel cite The Bowmen as the probable origin of the story. Two folklorists recently looked at the Angel and concluded that it represents "a contemporary legend which satisfied religious and patriotic needs, and became a powerful and enduring part of the mythology of the Great War" [14].

Finally, there's speculation about Brigadier John Charteris who was part of the intelligence branch of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force).

Could the Angel of Mons also be a story promulgated and encouraged by Charteris and British Intelligence? We have to consider why Britain might have seen value in promoting the story of the Angel in March/April 1915? The first Zeppelin raids on the British mainland had begun, terrifying civilians. The German submarine blockade of Britain had started, raising fears of starvation. The indecisive battle of Neuve Chapelle had produced high casualties but few gains. The initial flood of volunteers to join the British army was lessening. Most of all, war weariness was taking hold as the public began to realise that this horrific and destructive war was set to last much longer than had at first been expected. If the story of the Angel of Mons could help to lift the morale of the British people at this difficult time, persuade them of the divine rightness of their cause and encourage enlistment, it would surely make sense for military intelligence to assist in its spread?

After going into clues the article ends with -

There is certainly no good evidence to support the view that anything supernatural or even unusual happened during the retreat from Mons. The Bowmen may have had a role in the creation of the subsequent myth, but it does seem likely that this was at the very least assisted by British Intelligence. If true, the Angel of Mons is worthy of note not just as an interesting piece of social history, but also as a masterly and enduring early example of disinformation and propaganda.

So, here we have people believing in something which never happened with some evidence that British Intelligence helped the story along because it was useful as a morale booster. If this could happen just 100 years ago, why couldn't something similar have happened 2,000 years ago? After all, a story about the resurrected Jesus being seen by 500 people would have been very useful to the Church establishment.