I don’t know if Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) owes as much to surrealism as surrealism owes to Buñuel; be that as it may, someone with his intellectual trajectory could not fail to say interesting things about science and God, both surrealist subjects although each in very different ways.
Buñuel was a self-confessed atheist, for which he coined a very Buñuelian sentence: “I am an atheist by the grace of God”. With this title he devoted a chapter to the subject in his memoir Mi último suspiro (My Last Sigh). There he gives a very scientific explanation of why he does not believe in God: “Atheism – at least mine – necessarily leads to accepting the inexplicable. Our whole universe is a mystery. Since I refuse to involve an organising divinity, whose action seems to me more mysterious than the mystery, I can only live in a certain darkness”. In a blog like this one, we would be tempted to advise him to turn to science to dispel some of that darkness. But Don Luis distrusted science:
I am asked: What about Science, doesn’t it try, by other means, to reduce the mystery that surrounds us? Perhaps it does. But Science does not interest me. I find it presumptuous, analytical and superficial. It ignores dreams, chance, laughter, feeling and contradiction, all of which are precious to me. A character in La Vía Láctea (The Milky Way) said: “My hatred of Science and my contempt for technology will eventually lead me to this absurd belief in God”. There is no such thing. As far as I am concerned, it is even totally impossible. I have chosen my place, it is in the mystery. I can only respect it.
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