Process Christianity, the History of Computer Languages, and Quantum Computing

Process Christianity, the History of Computer

Languages, and Quantum Computing

by R.E. Slater

Introduction

Would you expect to find a post on Digital and Quantum Computing on a Christian website?! Well, why not? Christians should be interested in everything to help mold our religious worlds. We should be expanding our religious reality at every opportunity. For myself, I wish to allow doubt and uncertainty help lead and inform my religious beliefs. Plus I had a lifetime of service in the technology industry including a major portion of my schooling in mathematics and the sciences. So, I am always interested in learning something new!

I will here digress but you should know that further below will be a load of information that may be explored and learned on your own from early classical computing to quantum coding online in the cloud. But first, let me provide a tie-in from what I describe as "Process Christianity" to Process-based Sciences as they are being affected by Whiteheadian Process Philosophy in the foreseeable future.

Here, at Relevancy22, I try to envisage God and God's World around us. How we might fit in and work with God and with God's creation. And how our every thought might help reconstruct a new point of process-based human progress towards accomplishing healing and restitution between ourselves and the world at large.

Think of the world of computing as a helpful vaccine given to a pandemic world trying to rediscover it's humanity and presence in the world of nature. Computing across all industries, including greentech, will be able to do just that - nanocomputing, biologic and molecular computing, organic computing, AI computing, and so on.

Whatever we touch let us touch it for good, give it to the masses, and use any funds received to alleviate the world's troubles. I suppose this is a naive view but we all know our history how the machinations of man always screws things up. So stay noble, be wise, and invest when and where you can since money talks. And always remember you're first principles. Thus Process Christianity to help remind us that we but a wee part in a very large, and complex, universe.

One last, this is also an apt goal for any future worlds forming themselves into (cosmo)ecological societies and ecoworld civilizations. Don't you LOVE it?!! Computing and cosmological goals!  :0

The Progress of Computing Logic

Today I was curious about the progress of computing logic and languages. From its early silicon days to the quantum computing research and applications presently being undertaken. The logic basis of constructing synthetic machine language is dependent upon the medium used.

Whereas in the past a form of linear thinking or sequentially-based (Boolean+, Many-Valued) mathematics might have been applicably related to the silicon world of electromagnetism, in this next world of quantum materials I am guessing a form of "fuzzy logic" (imprecise free association) or, perhaps more properly, a form of "free logic" (unassociated free variables from objects), must be the minimum starting point. In psychological terms we might even consider "free association" (unassociated forms divested of relationships).

In fuzzy mathematics, fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1 both inclusive. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false. By contrast, in Boolean logic, the truth values of variables may only be the integer values 0 or 1.

The term fuzzy logic was introduced with the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by Lotfi Zadeh. Fuzzy logic had, however, been studied since the 1920s, as infinite-valued logic—notably by Łukasiewicz and Tarski.

Fuzzy logic is based on the observation that people make decisions based on imprecise and non-numerical information. Fuzzy models or sets are mathematical means of representing vagueness and imprecise information (hence the term fuzzy). These models have the capability of recognising, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and utilising data and information that are vague and lack certainty.

vs.

A free logic is a logic with fewer existential presuppositions than classical logic. Free logics may allow for terms that do not denote any object. Free logics may also allow models that have an empty domain. A free logic with the latter property is an inclusive logic.

The point of free logic, though, is to have a formalism that implies no particular ontology, but that merely makes an interpretation of Quine both formally possible and simple. An advantage of this is that formalizing theories of singular existence in free logic brings out their implications for easy analysis. Lambert takes the example of the theory proposed by Wesley C. Salmon and George Nahknikian, which is that to exist is to be self-identical.

vs.

Free association is the expression (as by speaking or writing) of the content of consciousness without censorship as an aid in gaining access to unconscious processes. The technique is used in psychoanalysis (and also in psychodynamic theory) which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic method of his mentor and colleague, Josef Breuer.

Freud described it as such: "The importance of free association is that the patients spoke for themselves, rather than repeating the ideas of the analyst; they work through their own material, rather than parroting another's suggestions".

We Live in Relational Worlds

What cannot be escaped is the idea of the relationship of things to things. Yet in this regard to either process mechanics or, process-based quantum physics, those relationships are severed and may freely associate with any other non-dissimilar relationship whether sensical or not.

As example, the picture of a well-ordered businessman or businesswoman in personal psychic crisis deconstructing himself or herself into elemental forms of human reconnection to self and society. Or the chemical bonds found is radical compounds freed from their ionic bonds to recompose into entirely new, non-historical configurations.

Tenet Trailer - Spoiler Alert

In the quantum world we will discover a new way of imagining cause and effect. Perhaps, similar to the TENET movie, by placing effect before cause in non-temporal terms of relational matter to matter freed of temporal bounds... yes, I disabused the movie's premise. Forgive me. I was freely associating :)

But in truth a photon of light has been shown to have virtually travelled its path before actually traveling its historical path, so welcome to the world of the strange found in the quantum world of the paradoxical.

Process Metaphysics

Last thought, as Metaphysicists examine the nature of the reality, or as Philosophers do the same, we must similarly ask ourselves the deep questions of life's material processes, of its organic processes, of even its unseen - some say, spiritual - connections between itself and one another. It is within this complexity we live-and-breathe-and-have-our-being which provides yet another fundamental direction to a purpose-filled world granted (process) theological regard of the Divine in relationship to the inherited immortal.

Inherited in that this world is but an organic process spun off from God's own Self. And immortal in that in process events, as processes live and die, come and go, its overall "manufacture" between ever evolving and freely associating event processes will live on-and-on-and-on even as its Creator-Author does. The very nature of the cosmos is immortal when defined in process terms.

Thus, we should learn to see life from the theological perspective. Let it override the perspective of the metaphysician, the philosopher, and the quantum world of wonder whose threshold we step upon as for the first time. We live in a process world of healing and wellbeing should we allow it. Let's do. And let's together see where it takes us.

Conclusion

Below I have laid out a graphic history of computing languages. A Family Tree of sorts. These iterations have all occurred in my lifetime with more to come. As example, Apache UNIX (2013) is being used by Databricks as an enterprise-wide computing platform in the Cloud. It is replacing all previous enterprise versions of corporate/proprietary UNIX solutions. Thus, IBM and HP had also sought this avenue to stay up with open-source code branded committers.

But what will computing firms do in the future as quantum computing comes on line? Stay to faster iterations of silicon-based computer languages or replace the older logic and language systems altogether with something more pertinent to the medium used? And what kind of quantum logic should be used?

Hence my post today. While thinking specifically, learn to also think universally. See Tim Eastman's discussion in an earlier post a month ago for more discussion here. Especially in his paper and the notes given at the end of the post. It speaks to the developing world of quantum logic and language.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

May 7, 2021

Scientists Find The First Animal That Doesn't Need Oxygen to Survive

Scientists Find The First Animal That

Doesn't Need Oxygen to Survive

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-the-first-animal-that-doesn-t-need-oxygen-to-survive

by Michelle Starr

May 10, 2020

Some truths about the Universe and our experience in it seem immutable. The sky is up. Gravity sucks. Nothing can travel faster than light. Multicellular life needs oxygen to live. Except we might need to rethink that last one.

Earlier this year, scientists discovered that a jellyfish-like parasite doesn't have a mitochondrial genome - the first multicellular organism known to have this absence. That means it doesn't breathe; in fact, it lives its life completely free of oxygen dependency.

This discovery isn't just changing our understanding of how life can work here on Earth - it could also have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.

Life started to develop the ability to metabolise oxygen - that is, respirate - sometime over 1.45 billion years ago. A larger archaeon engulfed a smaller bacterium, and somehow the bacterium's new home was beneficial to both parties, and the two stayed together.

That symbiotic relationship resulted in the two organisms evolving together, and eventually those bacteria ensconced within became organelles called mitochondria. Every cell in your body except red blood cells has large numbers of mitochondria, and these are essential for the respiration process.

They break down oxygen to produce a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, which multicellular organisms use to power cellular processes.

We know there are adaptations that allow some organisms to thrive in low-oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions. Some single-celled organisms have evolved mitochondria-related organelles for anaerobic metabolism; but the possibility of exclusively anaerobic multicellular organisms has been the subject of some scientific debate.

That is, until a team of researchers led by Dayana Yahalomi of Tel Aviv University in Israel decided to take another look at a common salmon parasite called Henneguya salminicola.

(Stephen Douglas Atkinson)

It's a cnidarian, belonging to the same phylum as corals, jellyfish and anemones. Although the cysts it creates in the fish's flesh are unsightly, the parasites are not harmful, and will live with the salmon for its entire life cycle.

Tucked away inside its host, the tiny cnidarian can survive quite hypoxic conditions. But exactly how it does so is difficult to know without looking at the creature's DNA - so that's what the researchers did.

They used deep sequencing and fluorescence microscopy to conduct a close study of H. salminicola, and found that it has lost its mitochondrial genome. In addition, it's also lost the capacity for aerobic respiration, and almost all of the nuclear genes involved in transcribing and replicating mitochondria.

Like the single-celled organisms, it had evolved mitochondria-related organelles, but these are unusual too - they have folds in the inner membrane not usually seen.

The same sequencing and microscopic methods in a closely related cnidarian fish parasite, Myxobolus squamalis, was used as a control, and clearly showed a mitochondrial genome.

These results show that here, at last, is a multicellular organism that doesn't need oxygen to survive.

Exactly how it survives is still something of a mystery. It could be leeching adenosine triphosphate from its host, but that's yet to be determined.

But the loss is pretty consistent with an overall trend in these creatures - one of genetic simplification. Over many, many years, they have basically devolved from a free-living jellyfish ancestor into the much more simple parasite we see today.

(Stephen Douglas Atkinson)

They've lost most of the original jellyfish genome, but retaining - oddly - a complex structure resembling jellyfish stinging cells. They don't use these to sting, but to cling to their hosts: an evolutionary adaptation from the free-living jellyfish's needs to the parasite's. You can see them in the image above - they're the things that look like eyes.

The discovery could help fisheries adapt their strategies for dealing with the parasite; although it's harmless to humans, no one wants to buy salmon riddled with tiny weird jellyfish.

But it's also a heck of a discovery for helping us to understand how life works.

"Our discovery confirms that adaptation to an anaerobic environment is not unique to single-celled eukaryotes, but has also evolved in a multicellular, parasitic animal," the researchers wrote in their paper, published in February 2020.

"Hence, H. salminicola provides an opportunity for understanding the evolutionary transition from an aerobic to an exclusive anaerobic metabolism."

* The research has been published in PNAS.

**A version of this article was first published in February 2020.

* * * * * * * * *

RELATED

The Amazing Story of Oxygen

Methane-filled Atmosphere of Early Earth

Helped ‘Clear the Air’ for Oxygen

The Story of Oxygen in Early Earth

Oxygen was a toxic gas in primordial earth's early history until it was not. How and why did this happen? It begins with the story of methane gas. Further, it seems to explain quite sufficiently the explosion of life in the Cambrian Period which everyone seems to make a fuss over (Why All the Fuss over Earth's Remarkable Cambrian Explosion?). The article that follows explains this....

R.E. Slater

August 15, 2018

Biologos - Mountains, Meadows, and Marmots: Creation or Judgment?

In today's article by Joel Duff the observation could be made that "What one sees as the pinnacle of God's creative work another claims as all wreck and ruin." As posted in Relevancy22's many topics on Creation is the thought that:

"Christian cosmologies need a definitive upgrade from their

traditionally bleak judgments and bleaker future expectations

ingrained so deeply within the church tradition."

Joel attests to this fact too - that all we see in our present day world is God's greatest gift and glory to mankind.

Enjoy,

R.E. Slater

March 12, 2017

Photo Credit: Joel Duff

Mountains, Meadows, and Marmots: Creation or Judgment?

http://biologos.org/blogs/guest/natural-and-biological-diversity-a-testament-to-gods-creative-power-or-a-consequence-of-sin

by Joel Duff (guest author)

March 9, 2017

This past summer I had the pleasure of sitting on a 13,000 foot ridge of La Plata Peak in Colorado for two hours while my oldest son ran up the final 1,300 feet to the top of the mountain. From this amazing perch I enjoyed looking out over dozens of mountain peaks topped with patches of snow and the presence of some friendly pikas and marmots while numerous forms of insects visited dozens of species of high alpine flowers.

My encounter with creation brought to mind Psalm 104, which recounts the acts of creation and proclaims that that:

“O LORD, how manifold are your works! 

In wisdom have you made them all; 

the earth is full of your creatures.” (v. 24 ESV)

Earlier in the same Psalm, mountains are mentioned: “The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers” (v. 18). Likewise in Psalm 19, David proclaims that the “heavens declare the Glory of God.” In the book of Job we find God exhorting Job to look at a wide variety of attributes with which He endowed His creatures, asking Job who he is to question the wisdom of His creation.

At no time while gazing over the mountain tops, as I interacted with the animals and took pictures of the flowers, did it occur to me that what I was witnessing was anything less than the glorious, good creation of God.

More recently I found myself in a theater taking in scenes of God’s creation through the documentary Is Genesis History? hosted by Del Tackett. This beautifully produced film transported myself and the rest of a clearly awed audience to many natural wonders of this world. Even though my interpretation of Genesis is much different than his, I could share with the Tackett (and the audience) a great sense of wonder at these magnificent scenes. So you can imagine my surprise[1] as I watched the final scene which found Dr. Tackett looking out over a landscape similar to my mountain experience and proclaiming, “It’s glorious, but represents the judgement of God.”

As surprising as this statement may sound, Dr. Tackett was only stating the logical conclusion which flows from his young-earth creationism (YEC) worldview. For him, what you and I experience is not so much God’s good creation as it is the end-product of God’s judgement.

How so? According to Tackett and like-minded YECs, geological processes such as earthquakes, floods—including Noah’s Flood—volcanism, plate tectonics, uplift, subsidence, and the like, could not have been a part of God’s “very good” creation. Instead, they were brought into the world by Adam’s sin, which affected every aspect of creation—possibly including extraterrestrial planets and stars. But these very same processes are the immediate cause of every geological formation we see today. Thus, had Adam never sinned, there would be no Grand Canyon, no Niagara Falls, no Mt. Kilimanjaro, and no Mt. Everest. In fact, there might have been no high mountains at all.

Is the present-day diversity of living things also the result of the judgement of God?

Despite a lack of YEC literature addressing ecological interactions in the pre-Fall world, it is evident that the young-earth view of the radical reconstruction of the world following Adam’s sin touches far more than the physical surface of the Earth. It also applies to the living inhabitants of creation as well.[2]

Rather than looking out over a mountain vista, Dr. Tackett might also have taken us to a zoo and said: “Look at all of these magnificent creatures complete with marvelous adaptations for survival in deserts and mountain tops. They remind us of God’s judgment for sin.”

Why? Consider that YECs believe the in the pre-fall world, no animals with the “breath of life” experienced death. This biological “perfect” paradise precludes disruptive events such as mutations and natural selection resulting from resource competition. If immortal animals had all the plants they could ever need for food and were all able to reproduce without impediment, then the need for adaptations for protection, competition, and even mate attraction would be unnecessary. One wonders what the function of variation among individual members of a “kind”—if any existed—could have been. Was diversity solely aesthetic?[3]

According to Tackett, after Adam and his offspring’s sin brought radical climatic change and geological destruction to the face of the whole earth, especially at the time of the Flood, a great diversity of species and all their amazing features sprang forth as they adapted via evolutionary mechanisms—albeit at an impossibly fast pace—to new habitats, especially as a result of the Flood.

Where did the genetic information come from that allowed for this post-fall explosion of new species? The film explains that the initial “very good” creation included organisms front-loaded with immense genetic variation and thus the capacity to evolve into new species after sin entered the world. In addition to raising some difficult questions of theodicy and God’s foreknowledge, this doesn’t make any biological sense.

Hibernating pikas and marmots? Alpine species of plants? Polar bears and arctic foxes? None of these existed in the original creation, according to YECs. Just how few species existed in the original creation? The YEC literature is very sparse but extensive speciation proposed by Answers in Genesis points to an initial creation with low diversity. For example they speculate that the 1100 species of bats alive today, in addition to all fossil species, originated from a single bat ancestor.

Each of these modern bat species has remarkable and unique adaptations to diverse environments that may not have existed in the pre-Fall world, sculpted by the mechanisms of evolution unleashed by Adam’s sin. Therefore, from a YEC perspective, the diversity of life on Earth at which we— and so many biblical authors—marvel is not representative of God’s original creation.

God’s invisible qualities clearly seen in the post-Fall world?

Finally, as the last scene of the Colorado landscape faded from view, Romans 1:20 appeared on the screen: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

Yet if the characteristics of living things and the very shape of the earth’s surface is evidence not of God’s power but of creation falling apart because of sin, how can God’s eternal power and divine nature be clearly seen in the world around us?

Mountains, weather, and biological diversity are consistently described in the Bible as being authored by God. In most contexts these natural features of the world are viewed with awe and reverence as good and wonderful things. We don’t find the psalmist blaming the existence of mountains on Adam’s sin nor even a global flood. Psalm 104 doesn’t attribute the lion roaring for its prey to Adam and Eve’s primal disobedience.

When Abraham and Lot, as recorded in Genesis 13, look down into the Dead Sea Valley, they don’t bemoan the fact that because of Adam’s sin a great rift in the Promised Land had opened up, creating the Dead Sea and a difficult passageway allowing access to the valley floor. But following the young-earth view to its logical end, had Adam not sinned the land before them would have had no sharp cliffs, barren spaces, or extreme heat or cold.[4]

Lot described this place as “like the garden of the Lord.” (Gen 13:10) But his response makes no sense in the young-earth perspective. How could this in any way be like the garden of the Lord if every plant, animal and even rock of the valley had been radically transformed as a result of Adam’s transgression? In the YEC worldview, this land would not have been recognizable to Adam and Eve in the prelapsarian world.

The evolutionary creationist sees God’s hand in every aspect of creation, present and past. For us, the beauty of creation is much more than just a shadow of a former time. Nature is damaged, in our view, not by a radical physical transformation at the moment of the first sin, but by the ravages of a broken humanity who does not worship the Creator as they should. We are not tending and keeping the “Garden” as it was intended.

It is difficult not to conclude that the original creation, as envisaged by YECs, must have been a rather monotonous place, lacking much of the geological and biological diversity of God’s creation that we can observe today. This perspective doesn’t align with the world that the biblical authors wrote about, nor does it align with the evidence from the world that we see today. We need a better way to understand what God has told us about who we are and how He formed this world we live in. At BioLogos, we are pursuing that better way.

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Notes

References & Credits

[1] My reaction is not unique, others—Reasons to Believe, in particular—have made similar observations in response to this scene.

[2] “Creation’s Original Diet” (Answers in Genesis), is one of a few articles that explores the pre-Fall creation ecology. Especially notable in this article are the emphasis on the lack of resource scarcity and availability of all plants—and presumably all plant parts—as food in the pre-Fall world. But whether speciation could have occurred or even if there were diversity of climates and ecosystems in the pre-Fall world is rarely discussed in the YEC literature (at least, that I am aware of, but I’ve read most of the popular literature on this subject). See also: “Did Adam step on an ant before the fall?” (AiG) in which the we are told that “accidents never happen in a perfect world.”

[3] Even the names given to animals by Adam (if we assume that they were passed from Adam to the Israelites) are inconsistent with the YEC understanding of the Edenic ecology. Many animals are given names that reflect their adaptations for survival in a world of death. For example, the root word for Lion in Hebrew is “'ariy”, which means “in the sense of violence.”

[4] George E. McCready Price, one of the intellectual founders of modern young earth creationism,provides a vision of the prelapsarian world that comports well with the sentiments expressed by Tackett in that final scene: “The earth, as Adam first saw it, was supremely beautiful. No bare, rocky cliffs towered up between him and the sunlight, frowning destruction upon his feeble steps; no wide, dreary swamps breathed pestilential vapors into his Eden home; no pathless deserts intervened between him and distant lands.”

And later: “Even the mild, soft climate, of singular uniformity over all the earth, north and south, was little changed after the expulsion from Eden, until that awful time when "all the fountains of the great deep" were "broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened," and a third dreadful curse rested upon the earth as the result of sin.”

Source: Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity, p. 154 and 155 (pub. 1902)

About the Author

Joel Duff is a professor of biology at The University of Akron. He earned his B.S. in biology from Calvin College, and a Ph.D. in botany from the University of Tennessee. He research focuses on understanding biological diversity by examining differences in DNA sequences and genome structure. He has worked on numerous plant and animals systems and has authored more than 40 research articles in science journals. He is an active writer and speaker exploring the intersection of science and Christian faith. He is a contributor to the book Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth and blogger at Naturalis Historia (thenaturalhistorian.com). He is an avid nature photographer and enjoys exploring God’s creation with his wife and five children.

Social Evolution & The Role of Religion in Humanity

Having written over the years of the evolutionary progress of life, humanity differs little from the animal world it resembles when viewed through scientific critique. However, it is unique from the animal world in its adaptation to survive its own species by locking onto that eusocial preservative trait known as religion. As a result, mankind was better able to survive as a species through the evolution of a conscience devoted in part to a developing societal religious consciousness seen both scientifically and theologically as hard wired into humanity's makeup (neurologically, if not genetically). But if God is Creator this would be a very natural consequence as God cannot divorce His presence from His creative work (which then would include quite naturally all of His creative work that has been divinely enacted into creation).

As a Christian this divine process is what one would expect when looking at divinely decreed creational evolution begun from a biologically chaotic state preordained, or "shaded towards", the scientifically discovered Darwinian model of life somehow managing to survive naturally hostile environments. The church might call this a "divine spark", or a "miracle", but when presented as a fully mature evolutionary system divinely decreed and sovereignly ruled God does not "interfere" with His design (by spark or miracle) but "partner with it" a la a free will creation imbued with indeterminative choices and results.

It also would be in keeping with a future always open and moving forward towards reconciliation with its Creator. It is the opposite of what is taught in many evangelical churches portraying God as the ultimate "choice maker" as versus a God giving that divine function over to His creation by wont and by will. Where, in place of predetermination, there lies an open, unknown future rebuilding towards a divinity locked away in itself. Drawn as it were by a Sovereign God through love and wisdom rather than by judgmental decree, otherworldly control, or divine retribution. The former is known as an Open and Relational (Process) theology of God-and-creation whereas the later avoids any process to its theology and falls back on Greek Hellenistic ideas of "gods and goddesses controlling everyone and everything according to their rights of divinity." This latter is thus a closed and definitive system disallowing any loving, free-willed partnerships.

R.E. Slater

March 1, 2017

* * * * * * * * *

An adult male marmoset carries the offspring he fathered on his back at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Marmosets are among the world’s smallest primates, with their heads slightly larger than the size of a quarter. | The Wildlife Conservation Society via AP

“A lot of people assume, falsely, that science and religion are zero-sum games:

that if science explains something, then religion must not be true. … If you were

God and wanted to set up the world in a certain way, wouldn’t you create

humans with bigger brains and the ability to imagine?” - Robin Dunbar

A scientist’s new theory: Religion was key to humans’ social evolution

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/02/27/a-scientists-new-theory-religion-was-key-to-humans-social-evolution/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.f2ed0f684ce8

by Julie Zauzmer

February 27, 2017

BOSTON — In humans’ mysterious journey to become intelligent, socializing creatures like no other in the animal world, one innovation played an essential role: religion.

That’s the theory that a preeminent evolutionary scientist is setting out to prove.

“You need something quite literally to stop everybody from killing everybody else out of just crossness,” said Robin Dunbar. “Somehow it’s clear that religions, all these doctrinal religions, create the sense that we’re all one family.”

Dunbar, an evolutionary psychology professor at Oxford University, gained some measure of fame more than 20 years ago for his research on the size of animals’ social networks. Each species of primate, he found, can manage to keep up a social bond with a certain number of other members of its own species. That number goes up as primates’ brain size increases, from monkeys to apes.

Humans, Dunbar found, are capable of maintaining significantly more social ties than the size of our brains alone could explain. He proved that each human is surprisingly consistent in the number of social ties we can maintain: About five with intimate friends, 50 with good friends, 150 with friends and 1,500 with people we could recognize by name. That discovery came to be known as “Dunbar’s number.”

And then Dunbar turned to figuring out why Dunbar’s number is so high. Did humor help us manage it? Exercise? Storytelling? That riddle has been Dunbar’s quest for years — and religion is the latest hypothesis he’s testing in his ongoing attempt to find the answer.

“Most of these things we’re looking at, you get in religion in one form or another,” he said.

Dunbar is just one of a recent wave of scientists who are interested in how religion came to be and how people have benefited from it.

“For most of Western intellectual history since the Enlightenment, religion has been thought of as ignorant and strange and an aberration and something that gets in the way of reason,” said Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame who studies religion. “In the last 10 or 20 years on many fronts, there’s been a change in thinking about religion, where a lot of neuroscientists have been saying religion is totally natural. It totally makes sense that we’re religious. Religion has served a lot of important functions in developing societies.”

In the case of Dunbar and his colleagues, they already published research demonstrating that two other particularly human behaviors increased people’s capacity for social bonding. In the lab, they showed that first, laughter, and second, singing, left research subjects more capable of forming connections with other people than they were before.

Religion is the remaining key to explaining humans’ remarkable social networks, Dunbar thinks. “These three things are very good at triggering endorphins, making us feel bonded,” he said last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting, where he presented his team’s research on laughter and singing and introduced the forthcoming research on religion.

Religion includes numerous elements of Dunbar’s earlier studies on endorphin-producing activities. Lots of singing, to start. Repetitive motion triggers endorphins, he said, noting that traditions from Catholicism to Islam to Buddhism to Hinduism make use of prayer beads.

Plus, researchers have shown that doing these activities in synchronized fashion with other people drastically magnifies the endorphin-producing effect: Picture the coordinated bowing that is central to Muslim, Jewish and Catholic worship.

And Dunbar’s most recent published research demonstrated the effectiveness of emotional storytelling in bonding groups of strangers who hear the story together — again, a fixture of religious worship.

“What you get from dance and singing on its own is a sense of belonging. It happens very quickly. What happens, I suspect, is that it can trigger very easily trance states,” Dunbar said. He theorizes that these spiritual experiences matter much more than dance and song alone. “Once you’ve triggered that, you’re in, I think, a different ballgame. It ramps up massively. That’s what’s triggered. There’s something there.”

Dunbar’s team will start research on religion in April, and he expects it will take three years. To begin, he wants to map a sort of evolutionary tree of religion, using statistical modeling to try to show when religious traditions evolved and how they morphed into each other.

Of course, religious people themselves might find Dunbar’s theory odd — most don’t think of religion existing to serve an evolutionary purpose, but of their faiths simply being true.

But Smith thinks one can easily have faith in both God’s truth and religion’s role in human development.

“From the religious point of view, you can say this … . God created humans as a very particular type of creature, with very particular brains and biology, just so that they would develop into the type of humans who would know God and believe in God,” Smith said. “They’re not in conflict at all.”

He added: “A lot of people assume, falsely, that science and religion are zero-sum games: that if science explains something, then religion must not be true. … If you were God and wanted to set up the world in a certain way, wouldn’t you create humans with bigger brains and the ability to imagine?”

One more research finding on the place of God in our brains — remember Dunbar’s number, the five intimate friends and 50 good friends and 150 friends each person can hold onto? Dunbar says that if a person feels he or she has a close relationship with a spiritual figure, like God or the Virgin Mary, then that spiritual personage actually fills up one of those numbered spots, just like a human relationship would. One of your closest friends, scientifically speaking, might be God.

12 Famous Scientists On The Possibility Of God

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious."

by Carol Kuruvilla, Religion Associate Editor

The Huffington Post
February 2, 2016

When President Barack Obama nominated the Christian geneticist Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health in 2009, some American scientistsquestioned whether someone who professed a strong belief in God was qualified to lead the largest biomedical research agency in the world. 

This argument -- that scientific inquiry is essentially incompatible with religious belief -- has been gaining traction in some circles in recent years. In fact, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center survey, American scientists are about half as likelyas the general public to believe in God or a higher, universal power. Still, the survey found that the percentage of scientists that believe in some form of a deity or power was higher than you may think -- 51 percent.  

Scientists throughout history have relied on data and observations to make sense of the world. But there are still some really big questions about the universe that science can't easily explain: Where did matter come from? What is consciousness? And what makes us human?

Where did matter come from? What is consciousness? And what makes us human?

In the past, this quest for understanding has given scientists both past and present plenty of opportunities for experiencing wonder and awe. That's because at their core, both science and religion require some kind of leap of faith -- whether it's belief in multiverses or belief in a personal God. 

In chronological order, here's a glimpse into what some of the world's greatest scientists thought about the possibility of a higher power.

• 1 Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
  
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  The astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei was famously convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church for supporting the theory that the planets revolved around the sun. In private letters, he confirmed that his beliefs hadn't changed.
  
  Writing to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, Galileo criticized philosophers of his time who blindly valued Biblical authority over scientific evidence.
  
  "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations."
• 2 Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
  
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  Known as the founder of the scientific method, Sir Francis Bacon believed that gathering and analyzing data in an organized way was essential to scientific progress. An Anglican, Bacon believed in the existence of God. 
  
  In an essay on atheism, Bacon wrote:
  
  "God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity."
• 3 Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)
  
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  Charles Darwin is best known for his theory of evolution. On the question of God, Darwin admitted in letters to friends that his feelings often fluctuated. He had a hard time believing that an omnipotent God would have created a world filled with so much suffering. But at the same time, he wasn't content to conclude that this "wonderful universe" was the result of "brute force." If he pressed for a label, hewrote that the term "agnostic" would fit him best.
   
  In an 1873 letter to Dutch writer Nicolaas Dirk Doedes, Darwin wrote: 
  
  "I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of the many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty."
• 4 Maria Mitchell (1818 - 1889)
  
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  Maria Mitchell was America's first female astronomer and the first woman to be named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was born into a Quaker family, but began to question her denomination's teachings in her twenties. She was eventually disowned from membership and for the rest of her life, didn't put much importance on church doctrines or attendance. Instead, she was a religious seeker who pursued a simpler sort of faith. 
  
  After hearing a minister preach about the dangers of science, Mitchell wrote: 
  
  "Scientific investigations, pushed on and on, will reveal new ways in which God works, and bring us deeper revelations of the wholly unknown."
• 5 Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)
  
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  Marie Curie, a physicist, was brought up in the Catholic faith, but reportedly became agnostic in her teens. She went on to become the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Both Marie and her husband Pierre Curie did not follow any specific religion.
  
  She is quoted as saying:
  
  "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
• 6 Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
  
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  Albert Einstein, one of the most well-known physicists of the 20th century, was born into a secular Jewish family. As an adult, he tried to avoid religious labels, rejecting the idea of a "personal God," but at the same time, separating himself from"fanatical atheists" whom he believed were unable to hear "the music of the spheres." 
  In a 1954 essay for NPR, Einstein wrote:
  
  "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious — the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, or who has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with the awareness of — and glimpse into — the marvelous construction of the existing world together with the steadfast determination to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature. This is the basics of cosmic religiosity, and it appears to me that the most important function of art and science is to awaken this feeling among the receptive and keep it alive."
• 7 Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958)
  
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  Rosalind Franklin, who helped pioneer the use of X-ray diffraction, was born into a Jewish family in London. In letters to her father, Franklin made it clear that she seriously doubted the existence of an all powerful creator, or life after death.
  
  When her father accused her of making science her religion, Franklin told him that she had a different definition of faith:
  
  "In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining. Anyone able to believe in all that religion implies obviously must have such faith, but I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world...I see no reason to believe that a creator of protoplasm or primeval matter, if such there be, has any reason to be interested in our insignificant race in a tiny corner of the universe, and still less in us, as still more insignificant individuals." 
• 8 Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
  
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  Astronomer Carl Sagan is best known for hosting the TV series "Cosmos." Herejected the label of "atheist" because he was open to the possibility that science would perhaps one day find compelling evidence to prove God. Nevertheless, he thought that the likelihood of that happening was very small. Instead, Sagan talked about "spirituality" as something that happens within the realm of material world, when humans encounter nature and are filled with awe.
  
  In his book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Saganwrites:
  
  "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual."
• 9 Stephen Hawking (Born 1942)
  
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  After years of hinting at it, physicist Stephen Hawking confirmed to the press in 2014 that he was an atheist. Hawkings doesn't believe in a heaven or an afterlife and says that the miracles of religion "aren't compatible" with science.
  
  In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Hawking said: 
  
  "Before we understood science, it was natural to believe that God created the universe, but now science offers a more convincing explanation."
• 10 Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Born 1952)
  
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  Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was born in an ancient town in Tamil Nadu, India, that is known for its famous temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva. A physicist and molecular biologist, Ramakrishnan was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on ribosomes. While many Hindus consider astrology to be an important Vedic science and schedule life events around the movements of the stars, Ramakrishnan has spoken out against this practice in the past. He believes astrology evolved from humans' desire to search for "patterns, generalize and believe.
  
  In an interview with the Hindustan Times, he said: 
  
  "There is no scientific basis for how movement of planets and stars can influence our fate. There is no reason for time of birth to influence events years later. The predictions made are either obvious or shown to be random ... A culture based on superstitions will do worse than one based on scientific knowledge and rational thoughts.”
• 11 Neil deGrasse Tyson (Born 1958)
  
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  Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and a popular television science expert. He told The Huffington Post thathe isn't convinced by religious arguments about the existence of a "Judeo-Christian" god that is all-powerful and all-good, especially when he observes the death and suffering caused by natural disasters. Still, he told Big Think that while he's often "claimed by atheists," he's actually more of an agnostic.
  
  In Death By Black Hole, a collection of science essays, Tyson writes:
  
  "So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
• 12 Francis Collins (Born 1960)
  
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  Francis Collins is the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In a 2007 book about the intersection between science and faith, Collins described how heconverted from atheism to Christianity and attempts to argue that the idea of a Christian God is compatible with Darwin's theory of evolution.
  
  In an essay for CNN, Collins writes: 
  
  "I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship."