Nonbelievers, how would you react if the following events happened to you?
You hear God speak quite explicitly while awake and engaged in daily life but no one but you has heard it.
You hear God speak and everyone else in the world also reports hearing the Voice.
There is a sudden mass disapperance of people by the millions all over the world.
I would assume it’s an alien invasion. Much more likely than the ridiculous God presented by the bible.
Even if the events exactly parallel those argued by some to be what’ll happen in the Apocalypse?
I make an appointment with a mental health professional.
That’s not God, that’s Vogons. Haven’t you read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
I feel cautiously optimistic that pollution will improve.
Aliens trying to fuck with me is far, far likelier than the sadistic moron presented in the bible. If the Bible is literally true, God has an IQ south of 90. If the bible is allegory, who the fuck gets to choose which nuggets to take seriously? Either way, there is no evidence for the existence of any God, much less Jehova. But we do know that life can exist in our universe. We know that for a fact.
We also know that intelligent things can decide to fuck with and deceive other intelligent things. So like I say, Occam’s razor suggests that it’s aliens fucking with me.
Of course I could be a schizophrenic if I saw those things too, but I like to assume I’m sane. 
Honestly, what is it you want to hear from nonbelievers?
Who knows? In all likelyhood, we’ll never have to deal with this issue so why worry about it?
Why would I presume I’m the only one who heard it? If I actually “heard” it, I’d just presume everyone around me heard it too. If, in the very unlikely event, I asked someone near me if they heard it and they said no, I’d think someone was messing with me. It wouldn’t even cross my mind that it could possibly be some kind of supernatural being.
I’d think it was a localized phenomenon perpetrated by someone with enough money and access to technology to transmit audio of his voice through all the speakers within 200 feet of my location, and consider all reports of “the voice” being heard around the world to be apocrypha. It’s laughable to think that anyone, even you Curtis, would just jump to the conclusion that a disembodied voice that says “I am god. Fear and obey me!” is a god. It’s simple human nature to look for the prankster.
If the disappearance was distributed pretty evenly all around the world, even if they all vanished {poof!} all at once, I probably wouldn’t even notice it. If I heard it on the news, at first I’d be skeptical, then upon confirmation I’d believe it was exaggeration, then upon confirmation of the number, I’d consider it some kind of pandemic. Again, it wouldn’t even occur to me to attribute a supernatural reason to it.
What would I do if life were a Chick Tract?
Have even more pity for Christians.
What’s the likeliest cause?
If I hear God’s voice speak clearly, there are a couple of possibilities. One is that I’ve developed some completely normal misapprehensions about the universe, similar to what billiions of other folks have experienced; the other is that the principles of science have failed. I’m going for the former.
If everyone else reports hearing God speak, we’re talking about a very rare sort of delusion vs. a failure of the principles of science. It will probably behoove me to act as though it’s a real occurrence, but the devil’s in the details. Which is only half-flip: there’s nothing here to assure me that whatever caused everyone to hear God’s voice is benevolent. Indeed, my experience as a human with smarter beings interacting with dumber beings is taht the smarter beings rarely have the best interests of the dumber beings at heart; it’s likely that this God entity is at best uninterested in my well-being.
If people disappear by the millions? I don’t know what I’d think, but aliens and fairies sound slightly more plausible to me than God.
Ignore it; hallucinations aren’t that rare or even necessarily dangerous (I recall a fellow who heard voices and saw things like floating disembodied heads being quoted as considering them “free entertainment”). Seek medical care if it starts to cause problems.
Fraud by aliens or severe hallucinations on my part are far more likely than one of the stupidest and most incoherent ideas in human history being true. Pretty much anything is more plausible than God, so I can’t imagine anything that could happen to convince me of him since there will always be a better explanation. Besides which, believing in God generally makes people behave monstrously.
I wouldn’t know what to think about it without more evidence of what happened. I’d be worried that it would happen to me, naturally.
Oh come on! Who on this whole planet is so important that someone like GOD wants to talk to them?
Refer to the answer for 1.
Get ready for the End of Days.
I seek immediate medical attention. I inevitably consider the possibility that I’m having some weird mystical experience, but I very strongly suspect that my experience is a hallucination–I’ve ingested a powerful psychedelic drug or have been stricken with schizophrenia or something.
I seriously consider that God might exist and is now interacting with the world at large. While considering this possibility, I also read up on mass hysteria, try to find out if any contagious disease exists that causes auditory hallucinations (does such a disease exist?), and otherwise look for a rational explanation that doesn’t involve the supernatural. However, because I’m a former Christian who sometimes experiences confusion when pondering certain theological issues, I probably pray while looking for my rational explanation.
Rapture? Alien abduction? Terrorist-wielded death rays? Seriously, I don’t know how I would react to this scenario, but I’m sure I would be very frightened. I would probably proceed in Scenario Three here much as I do in Scenario Two above, but I will admit that part of my investigation involves reading some books and articles on the rapture from various religious perspectives.
I think the three answers I provide are very likely, although depending on the details my suspicions and reactions might be different.
If God was real i would fight him with every ounce of my being. Any entity that has the power to stop evil and suffering and does nothing is at best uncaring, but when it starts demanding worship and obedience under the threat of eternal punishment then it is beyond evil. I don’t just not believe in your god, i do not understand how anyone who believes in him isn’t terrified to the core of their being.
For 1, I seek treatment from a mental health professional.
For 2, I enter negotiations for distribution rights to a certain old Blondie song.
For 3, I check out this old thread.
Impossible because no gods exist.
Impossible because no gods exist.
Probably a meteor hit the planet, like the one that killed off the dinosaurs. Everything has a reasonable and natural answer. That’s why no gods exist.
Honest and snarky answers:
Mental illness
Ask god if he is god and deserves to be listened to, why he never used that power before 1850 to explain germ theory to us. God speaking so everyone can hear could’ve really helped our ancestors out back in the dark ages when basic knowledge of medicine and agriculture could’ve saved billions of people from needless suffering.
Even if you could prove the judeo-christian god was real and had power over our world, he hasn’t used that power well enough to deserve to be respected or followed.
So either I’d be mentally ill (1) or there might be evidence of God being real (3) but not any evidence that he deserves to be listened to.
I’d think the terrorists finally won.
Well, no. A meteor that makes “people disappear” has some rather hard to miss effects on the surrounding landscape.