The Buddha declined to answer whether there is a God or whether the soul survives death, treating such questions as distractions from the path, which shapes how a Buddhist hears the God question.

When asked certain metaphysical questions, whether the world is eternal, whether the self exists after death, the Buddha is recorded refusing to answer. These are the undetermined questions. In the parable of the poisoned arrow he compares insisting on such answers to a wounded man who refuses treatment until he knows who shot him and dies before his questions are answered. The point was practical: these speculations do not help end suffering. This matters for a conversation, because a Buddhist may not so much deny God as set the question aside as unhelpful. The Christian claim is not that the question is answerable in the abstract, but that God has answered it by acting in history.