Well like Mercy in the original post of this thread, I am not being sarcastic or otherwise difficult or whatever with the following comment. And I confess that I offer it (in a rare situation, for me) without having read through the entire thread (in part because the thread was umpteen pages long before even 24 hours went by!).
But it seems to me that the original question of the thread is effectively starting with the assumption that God (however usually thought of) does in fact exist, and asking non-believers to sort of prove that God does not exist. Or something tantamount to that (even if the immediate question is more about what non-believers do in dire situations and so forth).
I'm not sure that is, in the end, the right or fair way to start off and base such a discussion, myself. Philosophy and religion have instead started off and based their discussions on God in the more intuitive way, by saying,
let's see if we can prove that God does exist, since we don't have the normal type of evidence for such existence.
It does get back to those more immediate questions, too, as the implication is that people who are not religious are lacking something when in dire situations. People who are not religious, though, could simply point out that they are not lacking something because the comfort or beliefs of those who are religious are not somehow real or valid or are the opiate of the masses or whatever. In fact, people who are not religious might see themselves as in a better position to deal with such crises or whatever, as they are not in some kind of religion-induced fog about their lives and reality and the nature of the world and so forth. (You think that's an exaggeration? Just watch a non-religious person throw up their hands in frustration and disbelief when a religious person reaches the point with reference to a very negative situation of saying something like,
oh, well, that's God's will, I guess!)
I'm not trying to take a side on this, I'm just saying that, even if it was unintentional, the original approach seems to be biased in such a way that Mercy and others won't get the kind of answer they may be interested in getting, because probably no satisfactory answer can be given, due to that bias inherent in the nature of the question.
That's my 0.02 USD worth, anyway.
Steve