Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Tragedy of Disbelief in God

“The tragedy of disbelieving in God is not
that a person ends up believing in nothing,
alas it is much worse, that person may
end up believing in anything.”

G.K. Chesterton

4 comments:

Julia said...

I love Chesterton but...I'm not sure I really get it. Or if I agree...???

Unknown said...

Julia,
The post before the Chesterton quote discussed how folks try to define a moral sense, etc. in the absence of belief in God. I liked the Chesterton quote because it does seem that once God is eliminated from the role of arbiter of good and evil, people find all kinds of crazy things to substitute for Him in their desire to have life make sense and have a foundation of good and evil. Materialists talk about the wonders of evolution or cosmology. They inject the words of religion into the arid precincts of chance and time. Spiritualists develop all sorts of ideas such as communicating with the dead, worshiping the spirits of plants, etc. Communists and Fascists deify the state or the party as the ulitmate authority. The list goes on and on. But a quote is just a sound bite. Using them is probably a bad habit I have picked up from watching too much TV news over the years :-)

Pamela Joy said...

Is that from The Man Who Was Thursday?

Unknown said...

Plamela,

Wish I knew the citation, I searched for it but couldn't find it. There are a lot of internet sites that list quotes but don't include the citation. I recently saw the quote in something another guy wrote.

Kent