The team at Google published a paper in mid 2024 that suggests self replication is an outcome of random fluctuations in mathematics. If true, this would potentially put religion to bed. To see the full paper, search a phrase such as this that they use in the paper: "We show that when random, non self-replicating programs are placed in an environment lacking any explicit fitness landscape, self-replicators tend to arise". or look up theri paper titled Computational Life: How Well-formed, Self-replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction by †Google, Paradigms of Intelligence Team and ‡The University of Chicago I am bringing it to everyone's attention as it just might have massive implications for humanity's understanding of how we came to be here. :)