GKC's Long Reach

A blogger from India invokes the big man's name to attack secularism, though it appears to be a re-print from an article in The Hindu ("India's National Newspaper"), who may have been re-printing it from The Guardian. It's hard to say, but I'm always interested to see GKC get mentioned on the other side of the Euphrates.

"By all means, let's have a serious debate about religious belief, one of the most complex and fascinating phenomena on the planet, but the suspicion is that it's not what this chorus wants. Behind unsubstantiated assertions, sweeping generalisations and random anecdotal evidence, there's the unmistakable whiff of panic; they fear religion is on the march again. There's an aggrieved frustration that they've been short-changed by history; we were supposed to be all atheist rationalists by now. Secularisation was supposed to be an inextricable part of progress. Even more grating, what secularisation there has been is accompanied by the growth of weird irrationalities from crystals to ley lines. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, the problem when people don't believe in God is not that they believe nothing, it is that they believe anything."

Link.