Imagine God gets down on earth. I’m not talking about any particular god, any omnipotent diety will do. Here are the stages of the society reaction:

First — denial. There have been a lot of claims of people being a messiah or even a god and if they are too persistent, a psychiatric ambulance would be on its way. Apart from a million questions, any person may have, what would happen to the faith. Can you have faith in something real (Credo quia absurdum.)? If you know something for real it’s just knowledge, not faith, isn’t it? That is not right, that simply CAN NOT be!

Second — anger. Then the supreme being provided with some proof for being supreme, traditionally — some spectacular miracles. The religious people are furious about the mismatch between their expectations and the real McCoy (God). For millennia people constructed their lives around their presumptions about God, including their core values, social structure, the legal system, etc. An order of the things which makes sense and everything has a meaning (not obvious, but it has). And all of a sudden here is the origin of all that wisdom saying that your holy book(s) is full of errata, mistranslations, and out of context and purposely misleading interpretations. Which sane mortal will be ok with sacrificing his/her life for an obvious lie. At the end of the day, who is more likely to be wrong: one being (even divine) or billions of people, …you know the answer. Ooh, the rage…

Third — bargaining. After a lot of steam is released, some people decided that they can find some sort of middle ground and in the process find a new position for themselves as new messiahs (…or something). If the deity is undeniably here, what can we do to profit from the situation? It does not matter if it’s a new religion or simply “Reformed church of (put your deity name here)”. Maybe Lord would like to spread the right words around the world and hence the need for an enormous amount of PR? That is if the free will clause is still valid. If — not, is there anything at all the deity wishes (being omni-everything)? The quest for a good bargain is endless.

Forth — depression. The deity doesn’t seem to have material needs or at least not in the form we can understand. Is a painting material thing, what about a song or a poem or a thought. They have material carriers but the essence is cultural, spiritual, intellectual. As a result of that, the bargaining isn’t going very well. Most of us live in a material world and any appeal to originality or inner beauty is greatly confusing and mostly depressing. How to satisfy God which wants you to be unique, jump into your death from a place nobody jumped before?

Fifth — acceptance. After several generations, God is old news, part of our ever-expanding view of nature. If his/her holiness is here and although he/she does things we cannot explain (for now), it is natural (not supernatural). The mystery is gone and most people are eager to find new god(s) which words they can interpret whichever way they like. God is declared “dead” one more time.

PS I don’t think that any religious person with just a grain of rationality about their God would like to meet Him/Her (besides in the afterlife I mean).