ical sync not possible

I have been all over the Internet on this and have found no solution. My Google calendar on my Linux desktop will appear on my iPhone calendar but the only way I can get it to work in reverse is to specifically post it to the Google calendar from my phone. (Then it comes back). That would be OK, except that you should be able to make it the default calendar so you don't have to do it every time. If there is no fix, I'll just abandon iCal and use the Google Calendar app on my phone, which works fine. It just bugs me that Apple will be so proprietary that it won't work nice with other apps.