Actually, machines are attuned to flat, unstructured lists of instructions, the polar opposite of functional programming. But when people wanted to think clearly, they invented math, of which FP is nearly the computational manifestation. You have the human-vs-machine thing exactly backwards. The reason we tend to think in imperative terms is one of familiarity: most of our first programming experiences are in languages that are (sometimes high-level, but still) descendants of assembly, because at first that was the only programming that existed: flat lists of instructions designed for a machine.
Granted, if a human wants to describe a physical process, they will use procedural language. But computers are primarily about information, and we think about information in terms of relationships. That's exactly what FP is about: expressing computation in terms of relationships.
Granted, if a human wants to describe a physical process, they will use procedural language. But computers are primarily about information, and we think about information in terms of relationships. That's exactly what FP is about: expressing computation in terms of relationships.