Is this a valid complaint? I hear people talking about "cosmic truth" all the time. I've participated in plenty of dorm room discussions and online debates about religion and the nature of things. The upshot seems to be that we're all free to come to our own conclusions, and given the inconclusive or unpersuasive arguments, we end up with idiosyncratic beliefs rather than orthodoxy. Is Chesterton just nostalgic for a mythical time when most people believed roughly the same things?

> I hear people talking about "cosmic truth" all the time.

If you, as a teacher, make some claims as to cosmic truth in Norway, you get fired. And a college dorm room is not the real world.