If Allah has a plan, what is the point of Dua?

[WinterHold]

NO, it did not exist in our consciousness, at least not in the divine comic book way religious people want to believe.

Religion and god claims are a result of gap filling, flawed perceptions. What you talk about existing in our consciousness is our evolved language and evolved awareness. The problem is humans did not have our modern scientific understanding of reality. What evolved was our ability to seek patterns, but at the same time we had no clue how to test and confirm those things we perceived. As a result of our ignorance, we made up answers when we had none. When something scary like a storm or a a volcano affected humans back then, they falsely assumed it was being controled by something human like, but with super powers. Humans were merely anthropomorphic in projecting their own qualities on non existent and non human things.

Our flawed perceptions lead us to gap fill. It is no different than an antelope on the African plane who has no time to assess if the swaying grass is mere wind, or a lion stalking it. It is the same reason that if a kid wants to believe that covered bowl of olives at the Halloween party in a dark kitchen are eyeballs, since thy don't have an adult brain if young enough, they lack the reasoning skills to make any credible determination about what is really going on. 

Humans basically had no understanding of nature, so they invented answers as a way to cope. Unfortunately even to this day, allows power structures to form with people who use those ideas as a way to control them. It isnt that all religious people are bad, it is that most humans don't have a grasp on how good logic works. "Faith" is simply easier for humans than actually testing and falsifying to confirm what they are perceiving.

I counter that with something I always thought about : the design of the universe is unified, and so similar to a degree making the idea of a higher deity logical; that's my personal view of it, though.
I understand you; fear did influence religion through all times -even now-, after all the heathen ideologies which Islam is opposing, are a product of what you mentioned in their essence : a mere "way to cope".

Modern Muslims too, have begun to change their religion as a way to cope. We've seen Muslims changing their faith to "cope" with rough battlefield conditions like in Syria, the extremist wings inside Judaism, Christianity & Islam are also a product of that : coping with the environment. 

But on an ideological level, I believe that most answers were answered at wrong times when knowledge was scarce, but many other answers were a product of an inevitable chain of odds that cannot be ignored. The ancients saw their share, we on the other hand saw a bigger share, and similarities in design began to pop up. The ancients did detect design similarities too.