Labyrinths of Belief

“Let us take such problems as freedom, i.e. free will and necessity. Then let the physiologist begin to explain all about how, if the blood circulates in a certain way, this and that is influenced, the same with pressure on the nerves, etc. etc.--yet in the end he cannot explain that freedom is an illusion. After having written 4 folios full of figures and curiosities he must say: but at the ultimate question our wonders stop. Then to what end all this knowledge? Is it not in inmost truth to deceive a human being, and is it not tantamount to gradually tricking him out of enthusiasm and keeping him suspended in the false expectation that sometime, by means of still more powerful microscopes, one would succeed in finding out that freedom had been an illusion, that the whole thing was a function of natural science?
All knowledge has something captivating about it; but on the other hand it changes the state of soul of the one who has it... And finally when the physiologist has filled his 4 extremely curious folios with the most astounding observations, he will admit to himself, if he be truly honest and spiritual, that he has not explained the Ultimate: the Ultimate which is the First and the Last of Ethics. And after the reader has finished the 4 folios and admired the physiologist, his state of mind will have undergone a gradual change. Do not, therefore, say that the Ethical shuns the light, is obscurantist, etc.-no-but the Ethical is hostile to a body of knowledge which, after having consumed a man's whole life, ultimately ends in his not being able to explain the most important.”

Kierkegaard