Fantasy and paganism are not necessarily always and immediately evil, as you seem to assume. There were virtuous pagans, such as the Roman Cicero. But Cicero have access to Christianity and then reject it, as many people do today.
Some wiccans are probably well-meaning and on balance more good than evil. But dabbling in that sort of thing can be very dangerous, and it can certainly turn into evil by degrees.
Whatever contempt I have for Wicca, I don't have that same dislike for individual Wiccans. Most of them are pretty dim and silly people, looking for a meaning that in fact only Christ can give them. I do find the general sense that people somehow believe Wicca to be worthy of the respect you would give to Buddhism or Judaism worrying though. Wicca is not a serious faith, and it is a loathesome doctrine so far as it exists at all. More to the point, it is a cynical attempt to cash in on the desires of rather unhappy young women to exert some sort of supernatural control over their lives.
Chesterson should stick to topics he knows. When one stops believing in God they turn to believing in themselves. At least some do. Like everything else in this world gross generalizations will be wrong more often than they're right. With 6 billion people on the planet predicting the hows, whys and results of any individual thought within any individual person is an excercise in foolishness.
>>Yes, it's a good analysis. As Chesterton and others have >>said, if you stop believing in God, you do not end up >>believing in nothing, but in anything. People desperately >>need some kind of magic, transcendence, higher meaning, >>or imaginative richness in their lives. If they lack the >>gift of real religion they may turn to harmful >>substitutes.
Of course, you (and Chesterton) were only speaking for yourselves (not all of humanity). Not all of us are so weak as to be unable to accept a vast world of uncertainty. We aren't all "desperate" for an explanation of the "big questions" of life. Those who are "desperate" to fulfill such a void will do so according to their upbringing. If you're born a Muslim AND you are an individual incapable of dealing with uncertainty, you will calm that uncertainty by believing in the Muslim religion your parents bring you up in. Ditto for Christianity, Judaism, etc. Sure, adult-conversions do occur, but (by-and-large) people who need an explanation for the uncertainties of life end up using the (religious) explanation their parents gave them.