Life is too much for explanation. Unamuno, Life 8.6

Proving God is impossible, according to Unamuno. To prove him is to conjure a false idol. Science is similarly unprovable, as it must always begin with material phenomena whose existence is prior to, and greater than, any rational explanation. The world, as humans experience it, is never perfectly rational or rationalizable.

Y si del modo de ser del Universo, pasamos a lo que se llama el orden y que se supone necesita un ordenador, cabe decir que orden es lo que hay y no concebimos otro. La prueba esa del orden del Universo, implica un paso del orden ideal al real, un proyectar nuestra mente afuera, un suponer que la explicación racional de una cosa produce la cosa misma. El arte humano, aleccionado por la Naturaleza, tiene un hacer consciente con que comprende el modo de hacer, y luego trasladamos este hacer artístico y consciente a una conciencia de un artista, que no se sabe de qué naturaleza aprendió su arte.

La comparación ya clásica con el reloj y el relojero, es inaplicable a un Ser absoluto, infinito y eterno. Es, además, otro modo de no explicar nada. Porque decir que el mundo es como es y no de otro modo porque Dios así lo hizo, mientras no sepamos por qué razón lo hizo así, no es decir nada. Y si sabemos la razón de haberlo así hecho Dios, éste sobra, y la razón basta. Si todo fuera matemáticas, si no hubiese elemento irracional, no se habría acudido a esa explicación de un Sumo Ordenador, que no es sino la razón de lo irracional y otra tapadera de nuestra ignorancia. Y no hablemos de aquella ridícula ocurrencia de que, echando al azar caracteres de imprenta, no puede salir compuesto el Quijote. Saldría compuesta cualquier otra cosa que llegaría a ser un Quijote para los que a ella tuviesen que atenerse y en ella se formasen y formaran parte de ella.

Esa ya clásica supuesta prueba redúcese, en el fondo, a hipostatizar o sustantivar la explicación o razón de un fenómeno, a decir que la Mecánica hace el movimiento, la Biología la vida, la Filología el lenguaje, la Química los cuerpos, sin más que mayusculizar la ciencia y convertirla en una potencia distinta de los fenómenos de que la extraemos y distinta de nuestra mente que la extrae. Pero a ese Dios así obtenido, y que no es sino la razón hipostatizada y proyectada al infinito, no hay manera de sentirlo como algo vivo y real y ni aun de concebirlo sino como una mera idea que con nosotros morirá.

If we abstract the thing known as order from the mode of being we find in the Universe, and then infer that order requires personal agency, it must be granted nonetheless that order is all that exists, and we know nothing else. The proof of universal order implies a step from ideal order to real—a projection of our mind outside itself, a supposition that rational explanation of a thing produces that thing. Human artifice, taught by nature, carries a conscious awareness with which it understands the process of making things, and as its heirs we then transfer this artful and conscious awareness to the personal consciousness of a mysterious divine artist, whose ordered art arises from nature we know not, in circumstances hidden from our view.

The classic analogy of the watch and the watchmaker is inapplicable to a Being absolute, infinite, and eternal. It is really just another method for avoiding any real explanation. Saying that the world is what it is, and nothing else, because God made it so, while we have no idea what his purpose was, amounts to saying nothing at all. On the other hand, if we know the reason why God made the world as he did, then God himself becomes superfluous, and the reason by itself is enough to explain universal order. If all that exists were reducible to mathematics, if there were no essentially irrational element in the world, then we would never find ourselves reaching for a Great Reckoner, a figure whose only essential explanatory purpose is to provide a reason for what is irrational, a patch to cover our ignorance. And let us say nothing about the ridiculous argument that no amount of throwing random letters together would yield Cervantes' Quijote. Putting letters together at random over time would yield composition whose ultimate outcome would be a Quijote for all who found themselves obliged to attend it and form themselves as part of its form.

The classical proof of God, so-called, amounts fundamentally to this: we concretize or substantiate the abstract explanation or reason given for some material phenomenon. By this way of reckoning, Mechanics makes movement. Biology creates life. Philology makes language. Chemistry creates bodies. We capitalize the science and convert it into a power distinct from the phenomena from which we extract it, and distinct furthermore from our own mind, the engine of this extraction. The God thus obtained is nothing more than reason or explanation itself, concretized and projected to infinity. There is no way to feel him as anything live or real. He cannot even be conceived except as a mere idea that will die with us.