Where the Questions Become Prayers

A late-night philosophical conversation about faith, religion, science, consciousness, suffering, and the things humanity may never fully understand.

I wrote a post about the universe not long ago.

Actually, it might be a little confusing. Like, why am I suddenly writing all these posts about the universe, spirituality and things that sound like they belong in a philosophy lecture? 😭

Honestly, I want you guys to succeed.

Not just in the good grades, good career, make money, have a nice life kind of way. I want you to understand yourself, find meaning, do good things, and have something to hold onto when life gets difficult. And if you believe there is something beyond this life, I want you to think about that too.

I’m not going to write this as a religious lecture, so don’t worry.

This isn’t about whether you believe in God or not.

It’s about a question humans have been asking for thousands of years.

What, if anything, is beyond us?

And before we get there, think about something that happens all the time.

Someone is having one of the worst days of their life.

They’ve tried fixing the situation.

They’ve tried being patient.

Nothing seems to work.

Eventually, they’re sitting alone at night, with absolutely no idea what to do next.

So they pray.

Not some beautiful, carefully prepared prayer.

Just:

“Please. I don’t know what else to do.”

Maybe nothing immediately happens.

Maybe something changes the next morning.

Maybe someone unexpectedly calls. Maybe an opportunity appears. Maybe circumstances simply shift.

And that person says:

“God helped me.”

Someone else might say:

“It was coincidence.”

A psychologist might look at their thoughts and behavior.

A neuroscientist could study what happens in their brain while they pray.

A statistician might ask how likely the event was to happen anyway.

And the believer might still say:

“I know what I experienced.”

So who’s right? And more importantly...

how would we even know?

That’s where this gets interesting.

Before We Ask Who God Is, What Do We Mean by “God”?

We throw the word God around as if it has one universal meaning.

But it doesn’t.

Is God a person?

A creator?

The first cause of the universe?

A necessary being?

The ground of existence?

Ultimate reality?

Something beyond space and time?

Something that cannot even properly be described using human language?

Philosophers have argued about these questions for centuries.

There are cosmological arguments asking why anything exists at all. Teleological arguments consider order and apparent purpose. Ontological arguments try to reason from the concept of God itself. There are arguments from morality, consciousness and religious experience.

And then there are arguments against God’s existence.

The problem of evil.

The hiddenness of God.

The apparent success of natural explanations.

The diversity of religions.

None of these debates has produced one universally accepted answer.

Which is probably why philosophy of religion is still very much alive.

Sometimes we talk about God as though humanity solved the question a long time ago.

We didn’t.

We’re still asking.

Before We Ask Who God Is, What Do We Mean by “God”?

We throw the word God around as if it has one universal meaning.

But it doesn’t.

Is God a person?

A creator?

The first cause of the universe?

A necessary being?

The ground of existence?

Ultimate reality?

Something beyond space and time?

Something that cannot even properly be described using human language?

Philosophers have argued about these questions for centuries.

There are cosmological arguments asking why anything exists at all. Teleological arguments consider order and apparent purpose. Ontological arguments try to reason from the concept of God itself. There are arguments from morality, consciousness and religious experience.

And then there are arguments against God’s existence.

The problem of evil.

The hiddenness of God.

The apparent success of natural explanations.

The diversity of religions.

None of these debates has produced one universally accepted answer.

Which is probably why philosophy of religion is still very much alive.

Sometimes we talk about God as though humanity solved the question a long time ago.

We didn’t.

We’re still asking.

---

Religion Isn’t as Simple as We Think

What exactly counts as a religion?

If religion means belief in a creator God, Buddhism immediately complicates that definition.

If it means belief in gods, we encounter traditions where gods aren’t the central philosophical concern.

If it means a sacred book and organized worship, we’re again forcing thousands of different traditions into one tiny box.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, and the religious worlds of ancient Greece and Rome have radically different ideas about reality, morality, ritual, death, the self and the divine.

They don’t all agree.

And that’s important.

I don’t like the lazy statement that “all religions are basically saying the same thing.”

They aren’t.

But perhaps they are all responding to something deeply human.

The feeling that existence is bigger than our ordinary experience of it.

---

Different Gods. Different Worlds. Same Human Curiosity?

Ancient Greeks imagined gods who were jealous, loving, angry, proud and protective.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam developed powerful traditions of monotheism, with one God as creator and sovereign of reality.

Hindu traditions developed enormously diverse understandings of Brahman, gods, the self and liberation.

Daoist philosophy speaks about the Dao, which cannot simply be reduced to a Western-style personal creator God.

Confucian thought focuses heavily on virtue, relationships, ritual and cultivating a good human life.

Jainism places extraordinary emphasis on nonviolence, discipline and liberation.

Buddhist philosophy does not require a creator God as the explanation of existence. Instead, it places liberation from suffering at the centre of its path.

These traditions aren’t interchangeable.

But look at the questions appearing again and again.

Why are we here?

Why do we suffer?

What makes a human being good?

What happens when we die?

Is consciousness more than the body?

Is there something beyond the physical world?

Can we know it?

Maybe that’s the real connection.

Not that all religions have the same answer.

But that humans keep asking.

---

What Buddhism Adds to the Question

This is one reason I find Buddhism philosophically fascinating.

Buddhist thought doesn’t require spirituality to end with finding a powerful being who can give us everything we want.

There are devas and other forms of existence within Buddhist cosmology, and Buddhist practice can include offerings, merit dedication, blessings, devotional practices and seeking protection.

But devas aren’t the ultimate goal.

They remain within samsara.

Even heavenly existence is conditioned and impermanent.

The ultimate goal is Nibbana, liberation.

And suddenly the question changes.

Instead of:

“Who can give me everything I want?”

we can ask:

“Why do I want everything I want?”

Why do I cling?

Why am I afraid of losing?

Why does pleasure disappear and leave me wanting more?

What exactly is this “self” I’m so obsessed with protecting?

The ideas of anicca, dukkha and anatta, impermanence, suffering or unsatisfactoriness and non-self, take us somewhere very different.

We suffer partly because we cling to things that cannot remain permanent.

And the path asks us to gradually understand and let go.

The goal isn’t easy.

Honestly, it’s freaking hard.

But that’s what makes the philosophy so interesting.

It isn’t simply promising:

“Ask, and you’ll receive.”

It’s asking:

“What if freedom comes from needing less to receive?”

---

But Then, What About God and Suffering?

Okay, let’s make things uncomfortable.

If God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good...

why does suffering exist?

Real suffering.

Children dying.

Animals suffering.

War.

Natural disasters.

Disease.

People losing everything.

This is the famous problem of evil, one of the central problems in philosophy of religion.

There are many philosophical responses to it, including free-will defenses, soul-making approaches, theodicies and arguments about the limits of human understanding.

But none has ended the debate.

And I don’t think we should rush to make suffering comfortable with some inspirational quote.

Sometimes “everything happens for a reason” is comforting.

Sometimes it’s the last thing a suffering person needs to hear.

Buddhism approaches the question differently.

Instead of asking only:

“Why would God allow suffering?”

it asks:

“What is suffering? What causes it? Can it cease?”

One approach tries to explain suffering within a universe governed by God.

The other investigates suffering itself.

And maybe both are worth thinking about.

---

Can Science Find God?

Okay.

This is where people usually start throwing things at each other. 😭

Science can study meditation.

It can study prayer.

It can study brain activity.

It can measure physiological changes.

But can a scientist measure God?

Can you put Allah into an MRI?

Can you measure Brahman?

Can you detect the Dao with a particle detector?

Can you put Nibbana on a graph?

Not in the ordinary scientific sense.

But that doesn’t automatically mean those things don’t exist.

It means science has particular methods, and those methods work with particular kinds of evidence.

This is why some philosophers describe science as methodologically atheistic. Scientific theories don’t invoke God or supernatural beings as mechanisms.

Others prefer methodologically agnostic. Science simply doesn’t take a position on whether God exists.

And that distinction matters.

Because:

“Science doesn’t use God to explain this phenomenon”

doesn’t equal:

“Science has proved God doesn’t exist.”

Those are completely different claims.

Science can tell us what happens in the brain during prayer.

That doesn’t necessarily tell us whether there is someone listening.

And the reverse is also true.

Someone having an intense spiritual experience doesn’t scientifically prove that their interpretation of it is correct.

We have to be careful in both directions.

---

What If Different Religions Are Different Windows?

There’s a philosophical position called religious pluralism, particularly associated with thinkers such as John Hick, which explores whether different religions might be responding to some deeper ultimate reality through different human concepts and cultural frameworks.

That doesn’t simply mean:

“All religions are the same.”

They clearly aren’t.

Maybe different traditions encounter something ultimate but describe it differently.

Maybe they’re genuinely encountering different things.

Maybe one tradition is closer to the truth.

Maybe none has the whole picture.

Maybe the question itself is wrong.

We don’t know.

And I think “we don’t know” is one of the most intellectually honest sentences a human being can say.

---

What About the Soul?

Now ask yourself something weird.

What exactly are you?

Your body changes.

Your thoughts change.

Your personality changes.

Yet you experience yourself as you.

So what is the self?

A soul?

A brain?

A stream of consciousness?

A collection of memories?

Something else?

Different traditions answer this radically differently.

Many religious traditions understand some form of soul or enduring spiritual identity.

Buddhist philosophy famously challenges the idea of a permanent, unchanging self through anatta, or non-self.

And that creates another fascinating question.

If there isn’t a permanent self...

what exactly continues through rebirth?

What carries karma?

What becomes liberated?

We don’t have to solve that today.

Honestly, I’m not solving thousands of years of philosophy in one Substack post. 😭

---

And Then There’s Manifestation

I’ve written about the universe and manifestation before, so I want to be careful here too.

There is a difference between:

“Visualization, gratitude and positive expectations can influence my behavior.”

and:

“Thinking about something hard enough scientifically forces the universe to give it to me.”

The first can be studied psychologically.

The second is a much larger metaphysical claim.

Maybe manifestation sometimes works because it changes the person doing it.

You write down what you want.

You become clearer.

You notice opportunities.

You become more confident.

You take actions you wouldn’t have taken before.

You keep going longer.

And eventually, something happens.

Was it the universe?

Psychology?

Coincidence?

Divine intervention?

I don’t know.

And I think it’s okay not to pretend that we know.

---

So Does Believing in God Make Us Good?

This might be the most important question here.

Humans have somehow managed to turn religion into a reason to hate each other.

“My God is right.”

“Your religion is wrong.”

“My people are better.”

“Those people are evil.”

And suddenly, something that was supposed to make us more compassionate becomes another excuse to hurt people.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth.

A deeply religious person can still be cruel.

An atheist can be compassionate.

Someone can know every religious text and still treat people terribly.

Someone else can know almost nothing about theology and spend their entire life helping others.

So maybe belief isn’t the final measure of goodness.

Maybe the better question is:

What does your belief make you do?

Does it make you kinder?

More forgiving?

More compassionate?

More willing to help?

More respectful of people who believe differently?

Because if our beliefs make us cruel to one another, perhaps we’ve missed something important.

---

So... What About God?

After all these questions, I don’t think we need to pretend we have a perfect answer.

I believe in God.

I believe there are things beyond what I can see and measure.

But believing doesn’t mean I have personally solved the mystery of existence.

Maybe God is exactly what different religions describe.

Maybe our human languages can only describe pieces of something much bigger.

Maybe we have misunderstood some things completely.

Maybe there are things about God that a human mind simply isn’t capable of understanding.

And maybe that’s okay.

Because perhaps God doesn’t expect us to understand everything about Him.

Maybe He just wants us to do good while we’re here.

Help someone when you can.

Forgive.

Love without constantly asking what you’ll get back.

Protect people and creatures that are vulnerable.

Be kind when nobody is watching.

Whether you call God… God, Allah, Brahman, the divine, or something else, becoming cruel in the name of our beliefs was never the point.

I don’t know everything about God.

But I know I want whatever I believe in to make me a better human being, not a better person than someone else.

And maybe that’s enough for now.

Believe. Question. Search. But above everything, do good. ♡