They would have thought it an act of God and branded anyone who said otherwise an evil lying heretic. People still do that today, for instance in the comments (15 pages worth) to this post about Blood Falls where the author chose to use the word evolve: http://www.good.is/post/science-rules-antarctic-glacier-has-...

AFAIK people still read the bible. You could probably still find out.

You are thinking of religions other than those based on the bible.

One of the goals of the bible was to get people to stop believing in other deities and to stop attributing natural events to mystical powers.