205 questions, answered honestly

Big Questions

Why is there anything? Does science rule out God? Why is there suffering? What if we’re wrong? The questions everyone asks, answered on several sides, in each side’s own words.

▶ Start: When people blame God Continue All episodes

Photo: Greg Rakozy grakozy / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Ask anything

205 questions, faced head on

Question of the day

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?4 min · ▶ clip · Suffering

Who is God?Three faiths?Is there a God?Suffering

Who is God? 31

One God, three faiths? 16

Is there a God? 30

Why suffering and evil? 26

Why worship and give thanks? 16

What does creation show? 31

What do the scriptures tell? 31

How do we live together? 24

In this series

7 minEpisode 1: When people blame GodWar, disease, a death in the family, a cruel verse, a God who seems silent or male or vain.

11 minEpisode 2: Does belief come naturally?Why nearly every human culture has believed in something greater, and what that does and doesn’t tell us.

11 minEpisode 3: Why do children suffer?The hardest form of the hardest question. Every faith has a parent at its heart who lost a child. This page goes gently.

12 minEpisode 4: Why does anything feel like anything? Consciousness and the soulScience can map what the brain does when you see red.

11 minEpisode 5: What about the evil done in God's name?Jesus warned that people would kill and think they were serving God.

12 minEpisode 6: Is the universe fine-tuned for life, and what would explain it?Two physicists wrote one book together and came to two different answers. That is a fair picture of where this argument stands.

9 minEpisode 7: If God knows everything, are we free?If God already knows what you will do tomorrow, can you choose otherwise?

9 minEpisode 8: Why did God take someone I love?When someone dies, this is rarely a puzzle for philosophers.

10 minEpisode 9: How can a loving God punish anyone?Hell is the teaching sceptics find hardest to forgive.

10 minEpisode 10: If God exists, why doesn't He just show Himself?Moses asked to see God. So did Arjuna. Both stories end the same way: the seeing was more than a person could bear.

10 minEpisode 11: Can anyone believe in God after the Holocaust?Six million Jews were murdered. Some survivors lost their faith, some kept it, and many argued with God for the rest of their lives.

9 minEpisode 12: Didn’t humans just invent God?Three famous thinkers said God is a human creation: our best qualities projected on the sky, a painkiller, a father figure.

11 minEpisode 13: Is God cruel? The hard passages in scriptureEvery holy book has pages that make readers wince.

9 minEpisode 14: Is God a man?Scriptures often say “He”. Yet the same scriptures compare God to a mother, a nursing woman and a hen gathering her chicks.

13 minEpisode 15: Why do people leave belief, and why do others stay?Millions of Britons have stepped away from the faith they grew up with.

11 minEpisode 16: Why does the universe follow laws we can understand?A few symbols on paper can find a planet no one has seen. Why should the world be readable at all?

12 minEpisode 17: How did life begin, and does it need a Creator?Chemistry became biology at least four billion years ago. Scientists are piecing together how. What it means is a separate question.

13 minEpisode 18: Does religion cause war?Every faith has blood in its history, and every faith has peacemakers who stood against it. The honest answer is more interesting than either slogan.

11 minEpisode 19: Is it the same God?Jews, Christians and Muslims all speak of the God of Abraham (peace be upon him).

11 minEpisode 20: Does science rule out God?On every big question we looked at, serious scientists and philosophers stand on both sides, and none of them is settled by the evidence.

12 minEpisode 21: Why is there something rather than nothing?Physics can tell us how one thing becomes another. Why there is anything at all is a question that believers and sceptics still share.

12 minEpisode 22: Why is there suffering?The oldest question, and the hardest. It is asked inside every faith, not only against them.

13 minEpisode 23: Did the universe have a beginning, and does it need a cause?A medieval Muslim argument, a modern theorem and a famous debate. The science is shared; what it means is not.

10 minEpisode 24: Why doesn't God answer my prayer?Moses begged to enter the Promised Land, and was told to stop asking.

12 minEpisode 25: What if we’re wrong?Every tradition here has its own way of saying “we might be wrong”. A question each of us can ask ourselves, believer or not.

11 minEpisode 26: Who made God?The question every child asks, and philosophers still argue over.

11 minEpisode 27: Why do earthquakes and floods happen?On a holy day in 1755, an earthquake brought down Lisbon's churches on the people praying inside them.

10 minEpisode 28: Why do people not believe in God?Even Abraham asked God for proof. Doubt is not only something that happens to faith from outside.

11 minEpisode 29: Why is there disease?Charles Darwin could not believe God designed a wasp that eats caterpillars alive.

9 minEpisode 30: Why would God put us here to be tested?Exams are stressful enough. Why would a loving God make life itself one?

12 minEpisode 31: If there is a God, why are there wars?Before there were any people, the Qur'an says, the angels asked this very question.

9 minEpisode 32: Why would God need our worship?If God has everything, why ask us to bow, pray and praise? Every tradition gives the same surprising answer: He doesn’t need it. We do.

The hardest questions

If there is a God, why war, why disease, why do children suffer? Faced head on: each faith in its own words, and honest answers from people of no faith.

Free will · Responsibility · What each faith says war is, and isn'tIf there is a God, why are there wars?Before there were any people, the Qur'an says, the angels asked this very question. Every tradition gives the same first answer: war is something we do.

Germs and genes · Natural evil · Healing as a sacred dutyWhy is there disease?Charles Darwin could not believe God designed a wasp that eats caterpillars alive. In the same letter he wrote that he could not believe it was all brute force either. Both halves of his letter belong on this page.

Lisbon 1755 · A restless planet · Natural evil · The helpersWhy do earthquakes and floods happen?On a holy day in 1755, an earthquake brought down Lisbon's churches on the people praying inside them. Europe has argued about God and disasters ever since. The science adds a twist: the shaking planet is also the living one.

Ivan Karamazov · King David · The Prophet's son · Kisa Gotami · GriefWhy do children suffer?The hardest form of the hardest question. Every faith has a parent at its heart who lost a child. This page goes gently.

Jewish responses · Christian reckoning · Rescuers of every faith · Holocaust Memorial DayCan anyone believe in God after the Holocaust?Six million Jews were murdered. Some survivors lost their faith, some kept it, and many argued with God for the rest of their lives. The question belongs to them first.

The reasons people give · What the research shows · Doubt inside every faithWhy do people not believe in God?Even Abraham asked God for proof. Doubt is not only something that happens to faith from outside. Every tradition has room for it, and every non-believer deserves to be heard in their own words.

Moses on the mountain · Isaiah's hidden God · Schellenberg's argument · Signs everywhereIf God exists, why doesn't He just show Himself?Moses asked to see God. So did Arjuna. Both stories end the same way: the seeing was more than a person could bear. A modern philosopher has turned the question into one of the strongest arguments against God.

Moses told “no” · Gethsemane · The three answers · What the research foundWhy doesn't God answer my prayer?Moses begged to enter the Promised Land, and was told to stop asking. Jesus prayed for the cup to pass. Every faith remembers prayers that got a “no”, and each has something to say about what prayer is for.

The scriptures' own warnings · Churches that apologised · Scholars who condemned · Why good people do terrible thingsWhat about the evil done in God's name?Jesus warned that people would kill and think they were serving God. The Qur'an describes those who spread corruption while calling themselves reformers. The traditions saw this coming, and each has had to face it in its own history.

When people blame God: every accusation, answered Remembering together

The universe

Qur'an 52:35 · PhilosophyWhy is there something rather than nothing?Physics can tell us how one thing becomes another. Why there is anything at all is a question that believers and sceptics still share.

Qur'an 57:3 · Philosophy and cosmologyDid the universe have a beginning, and does it need a cause?A medieval Muslim argument, a modern theorem and a famous debate. The science is shared; what it means is not.

Qur'an 112 · PhilosophyWho made God?The question every child asks, and philosophers still argue over. It is a fair question, and the right place to be honest about what believers actually claim.

Qur'an 67:3–4 · Philosophy and physicsIs the universe fine-tuned for life, and what would explain it?Two physicists wrote one book together and came to two different answers. That is a fair picture of where this argument stands.

Qur'an 55:5–7 · Mathematics and philosophyWhy does the universe follow laws we can understand?A few symbols on paper can find a planet no one has seen. Why should the world be readable at all?

Science, life and mind

Qur'an 3:190 · Science and faithDoes science rule out God?On every big question we looked at, serious scientists and philosophers stand on both sides, and none of them is settled by the evidence. That is the honest position.

Qur'an 29:20 · Biology and philosophyHow did life begin, and does it need a Creator?Chemistry became biology at least four billion years ago. Scientists are piecing together how. What it means is a separate question.

Qur'an 17:85 · Mind and philosophyWhy does anything feel like anything? Consciousness and the soulScience can map what the brain does when you see red. Why it feels like something at all is still a mystery, and it may say something about what we are.

Qur'an 30:30 · Mind and beliefDoes belief come naturally?Why nearly every human culture has believed in something greater, and what that does and doesn’t tell us.

Living with the questions

Qur'an 2:155–156 · PhilosophyWhy is there suffering?The oldest question, and the hardest. It is asked inside every faith, not only against them.

Qur'an 5:32 · HistoryDoes religion cause war?Every faith has blood in its history, and every faith has peacemakers who stood against it. The honest answer is more interesting than either slogan.

Qur'an 29:46 · Each faith in its own wordsIs it the same God?Jews, Christians and Muslims all speak of the God of Abraham (peace be upon him). Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews call Him Allah. Whether it is the same God is answered differently inside each faith.

Qur'an 2:256 · Society and the inner lifeWhy do people leave belief, and why do others stay?Millions of Britons have stepped away from the faith they grew up with. Others hold on, return or find faith for the first time. Each story deserves respect.

Qur'an 12:76 · ReflectionWhat if we’re wrong?Every tradition here has its own way of saying “we might be wrong”. A question each of us can ask ourselves, believer or not.

Most of us carry around a handful of very big questions. We ask them at three in the morning, at funerals, under a clear night sky, or when a child catches us off guard. Is anyone there? Why is the world like this? What if I have got it all wrong?

This section takes those questions seriously. Each page gives the best case on several sides: the believer’s, the sceptic’s, and the honest middle where the evidence runs out. Then Jews, Christians and Muslims each answer in their own words, from their own scriptures and teachers, and so do people who live without religion. We don’t pick winners. We would rather you left with a better question than a borrowed answer.

“When I behold Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast established; What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that Thou thinkest of him?”

Psalms 8:4–5 · JPS 1917

Psalm 8 is a hymn of wonder attributed to David, sung in synagogues and churches for some three thousand years. It asks the question beneath all the others on this page: in a universe so large, what are we? The Qur’an asks people again and again to look up and think: “Have they not then observed the sky above them, how We have constructed it and beautified it, and how there are no rifts therein?” (50:6, Pickthall).

What Britain thinks: the numbers

Britain is one of the least religious countries in the world, and also one of the most varied. In the 2021 Census for England and Wales, 46.2% of people described themselves as Christian, 37.2% as having no religion, 6.5% as Muslim and 0.5% as Jewish. It was the first census in which fewer than half the population called themselves Christian.

Identity is not the same as belief. The British Social Attitudes survey for 2024 found that 49% of people in Great Britain said they belonged to no religion, and that only about 9% went to a religious service weekly. The social scientist Sir John Curtice summed up the latest data in December 2025: the decline in religious identity has stopped, but there is no sign of a revival.

Belief in God is harder to measure. A 2020 YouGov poll found that 27% of Britons believed in “a god” and a further 16% in “some kind of higher power”. Many people sit somewhere in between, unsure, or believing without belonging. In 2022 a study by Theos and the Faraday Institute found that 57% of British adults saw science and religion as incompatible, while 74% accepted evolution.

The questions don’t go away when belief declines. People without religion still ask why there is anything, what makes life matter, and how to live with suffering. That is why every page in this section is written for people of every faith and none alike.

46.2%Christian in England and Wales (Census 2021)

37.2%no religion in England and Wales (Census 2021)

6.5%Muslim in England and Wales (Census 2021)

What each faith says

Read:

Judaism

“What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that Thou thinkest of him?”
Psalms 8:5 · JPS 1917

Judaism has a long love of questions. At the Passover meal, the youngest child asks four questions, beginning “Why is this night different from all other nights?”, and the whole evening is built around answering. The Talmud is largely a record of arguments, with the minority view kept alongside the majority.

Abraham questions God over Sodom; Job questions God over his suffering. The Psalms ask “How long?” and “Why?” Jewish tradition treats honest questioning as part of a relationship with God, not a threat to it.

Christianity

“Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen.”
Hebrews 11:1 · WEB

Christian theology was described by St Anselm in the eleventh century as “faith seeking understanding”. Christians believe God gave human beings minds to use, and the tradition includes some of the most demanding thinkers in history, from Augustine and Aquinas to Pascal and Kierkegaard.

In the Gospels, Jesus answers questions with questions, tells stories that leave listeners thinking, and welcomes Thomas, who would not believe without seeing. The first letter of Peter asks believers to be ready to give a reason for their hope, “with humility and fear” (1 Peter 3:15).

Islam

“Have they not then observed the sky above them, how We have constructed it and beautified it, and how there are no rifts therein?”
Qur'an 50:6 · Pickthall (1930)

The Qur’an repeatedly asks its listeners to think: “Will they not reflect?”, “Do they not use reason?”, “Do they not look?” It praises “people of understanding” who reflect on creation (3:190–191). Muslim philosophers and theologians, from al-Kindi and Ibn Sina to al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd, argued fiercely about reason and revelation.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) is reported to have said that the cure for not knowing is to ask (Abu Dawud 336, graded ḥasan by some scholars and weak by others). Muslim scholars traditionally end an answer with “God knows best”, a reminder that every human answer is provisional.

Without religion

“… in the absence of an afterlife and any discernible purpose to the universe, human beings can act to give their own lives meaning by seeking happiness in this life and helping others to do the same.”
Humanists UK, ‘What is humanism?’ · original English

More than a third of people in England and Wales ticked “No religion” in the 2021 Census. About half of British adults told the British Social Attitudes survey in 2018 that they belong to no religion. They are not one group. Some call themselves humanists, some atheists or agnostics; many would simply say they are not religious. Some grew up in a faith and left it. Many never had one.

They ask the big questions too, at the same funerals and under the same night sky, and answer them without God. In What I Believe (2024), Andrew Copson of Humanists UK gathered more than thirty humanists answering in their own words. Among them are the anatomist Alice Roberts, the classicist Natalie Haynes, the broadcaster Sandi Toksvig and the physicist Jim Al-Khalili. Their answers differ. What they share is trust in evidence, and the conviction that this life is the one to make good.

Same and different

All three faiths make room for questions, keep stories of doubt and protest in their scriptures, and have rich traditions of philosophy. They also share a conviction that some answers come by revelation, not only by reasoning. They differ in the answers they reach, and on these pages we say so plainly. Non-religious people share the questions and the love of reasoning, and often the wonder too.

A moment to reflect

Which of the seven questions matters most to you right now? Why that one?
Is there a question you were told not to ask? What happened when you asked it anyway?
Who is the best person you know to talk to about big questions? What makes them good at it?
Which big question do you think people of every faith and none ask in exactly the same words?

Watch

The five major world religions - John Bellaimey · TED-Ed Plays on “One Creator, beyond Abraham” →

A five-minute introduction to the world’s major religions, as a starting map.

Philosophers and scientists of several views on why anyone believes in God.

REThink - debate with Rabbi Sacks and Richard Dawkins · The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Plays on “Does science rule out God?” →

Rabbi Sacks and Richard Dawkins model how to disagree well about the biggest questions.

Do it together

families / schoolsQuestion jar

Put a jar on the table for a month. Anyone can drop in a big question on a slip of paper. Once a week, pull one out over dinner or in class and talk about it, with no one obliged to answer.

neighbours / faith groups / humanist groupsBig Questions café

Host a monthly evening in a café, library or community centre. Pick one page from this section, read the hook aloud, and discuss in small mixed tables of people with a faith and people without one.

families / community groupsNight sky walk

On a clear night, go somewhere dark. Read Psalm 8 and Qur’an 50:6 aloud, then spend five minutes in silence looking up. Share one word each about how it felt.

families / schoolsFour questions at the table

At the Passover meal, the seder, the youngest child asks four questions and the whole evening answers them. Borrow the idea: at your next family meal, let the youngest ask one big question and have everyone answer in turn, from their own faith or none.

neighbours / community groupsChoral Evensong

Go together to Choral Evensong in a cathedral or college chapel: the Church of England’s evening service of psalms, readings and the Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise. It is free and open to all. Afterwards, share which words stayed with you.

Go deeper

Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 (ONS) · article
British Social Attitudes: Religion (NatCen) · article
Philosophy of Religion (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) · article
Psalm 8 (Sefaria) · scripture
Philosophy and ethics, GCSE RS (BBC Bitesize) · article
The Four Questions, Passover Haggadah (Sefaria) · scripture
Augustine, Confessions (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) · book
Understanding Humanism: resources for schools (Humanists UK) · article

In pictures

A lone figure, seen from behind, looks up at a sky full of stars. Greg Rakozy grakozy / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Beams of sunlight break through dark storm clouds as the weather clears. JaredMcKenzie / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

Sources (5)

Census 2021 religion figures: ONS, Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021
BSA 2024: 49% no religion, ~9% weekly attendance; Curtice Dec 2025: NatCen, British Social Attitudes
YouGov Dec 2020: 27% believe in a god, 16% higher power: YouGov, 2020
57% incompatible; 74% accept evolution: Theos and the Faraday Institute, 2022
Hadith: the cure for ignorance is to ask: Sunan Abi Dawud 336, Sunnah.com

How people recognise a Creator

A hub · Instinct, reason, wonder, the world's peoplesHow people recognise a CreatorLong before anyone heard a sermon, people looked at the sky and asked who made it. This is where we gather the ways human beings have come to recognise a Creator, and the questions honest people still ask.

Watch more: Big Questions

7 films and talks, chosen for this page. They play here.

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? | Alex O'Connor (Part 11 of 19)
Closer To Truth · 15 min
Why Do People Suffer? God's Existence & the Problem of Evil | Behind the Scenes
Yaqeen Institute · 4 min
Can the Problem of Evil Be Solved? (feat. Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.)
Ascension Presents · 10 min
Ascension Presents: can the problem of evil be solved?
Are Science and Faith in Conflict?
BioLogos · 5 min
Shoaib Malik - Islam, Science and God (1/4)
Cambridge Muslim College · 18 min
Cambridge Muslim College: Shoaib Malik on Islam, science and God.
How Science and Religion Can Agree on the Age of Our Universe | Faith Meets Fact Ep. 1
Jewish Learning Institute · 10 min
Jewish Learning Institute: how science and religion can agree on the age of the universe.
If there is a God, why…?
whoisallah.org.uk · 1 min
More films and talks on F-ILMWatch free