Is praying to god for answers cheating?

In an examination of the question “is praying to god cheating?”, it is important to define exactly what cheating is. Cheating, for the most part, can be defined as the attempt to gain an unfair advantage over your peers or adversaries. For instance, in the case of sports, if you alter yourself with illegal substances that others can not use, you would be cheating due to the fact that your adversaries and peers do not have this same alteration, you will have gained an unfair advantage over the other players who have not taken this illegal substance. Now, in this same scenario let us change reality a little and say that each player has equal access to these substances and that it is no longer illegal to use the substance to alter yourself and improve your level of play. The use of this substance then would become common practice and would no longer be considered cheating because the playing field is even, it is no longer unfair. However, if a player decides not to take these substances, and decides to not better himself through an act that is now common practice and available to everyone then they are putting themselves at a disadvantage. This is very similar to praying to god to help you find the answers before a test.

When considering whether it is cheating to pray to god for answers before a test, one must apply the same methods of judgment as in the sports case. Every person and every peer has access to prayer and is free to use it to better their play (ability), but some choose not to use this ability. This does not make praying an unfair advantage but instead an unused one. It is easier to understand through an illustration. Let us take studying as an example. Studying is available to all students to take advantage of, yet in many cases, students do not take full advantage of their opportunity to better their abilities. Still we do not consider studying cheating. Alas, many a time have I said to my philosophy professor, “But professor, they took full advantage of studying and I did not, this is why they made a better grade. This is unfair!” However the professor just laughed at me and told me to leave his office. In theory praying to god should be held in the same regard as studying. Each person has the opportunity to take advantage of this ability but some choose not to. So one cannot say to their professors, “But professor, they took full advantage of praying and I did not, this is why they made a better grade, they are cheating!” The professor should say, “You had equal opportunity to take advantage of this ability yet you did not, perhaps you should do this on your next exam.”

However there are some that would challenge my definition of cheating. They would argue that perhaps cheating should be defined as an act in which someone capitalizes on work that is not their own. While I would agree that this could be one case of cheating, it will not suffice as the complete definition. Let us use another scenario to clear up this point. In sports when an athlete uses illegal substances to improve their skill they are not using someone else's work, yet we still would consider this cheating. Conversely when I study for Philosophy I use the work of my professor (the slide-shows) to help me prepare for the test. I capitalize on his work to optimize my ability, yet we would not consider this cheating.

The fact of the matter is that cheating in its most basic and most direct form is merely something that is unfair. Truly, the reason we consider something cheating is because it is unfair. In this regard one could not consider praying as unfair due to the fact that every person has equal access to prayer thus proving that praying to god for answers on a test is not cheating.