The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding - Proverbs 9:10

Unless one has acknowledged the LORD, one has not even begun in the pursuit of wisdom, for fear of the Lord is the starting point. We have all met folks who are worldly smart and those who are highly educated and esteemed as "brilliant" - only to show their lack of wisdom in failing to give proper reverence to God. In their endeavors to become wise, they prove their ignorance. Look at how Phillips describes it:

To me there is a much more frightening ignorance in our modern world than the ignorance of the heathen." I am referring to the almost total ignorance of the content and implication of the Christian Faith shown by many "clever" people today. Frankly, I find it horrifying to discover that men who are experts in their own line--in astronomy, genetics, or nuclear physics, for example--have no adult knowledge of what the Church of Christ stands for, and a complete blank ignorance of what the Church is achieving today. It is the more horrifying because people who rightly respect the expert for his knowledge in his own field have no idea that he has not carefully examined and reluctantly discarded Christianity; but in all probability he has never studied it at all!

J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), The Church Under the Cross [1956]