Debate

If you're just after the usual mundane claptrap about life, the universe and our 2 month, 1 day piss-up in Australia, you'd be advised to scroll down 5 paragraphs...

After another dismal day for England at the MCG yesterday, Hoopy and I decided to escape downtown Melbourne last night and wandered up to Fitzroy, where we found a damn decent boozer and settled down for the evening. After a couple of pints of Toohey's New, the conversation wandered from the mundane to the in-depth and back again many times and we spent a good three hours discussing philosophy, religion, spirituality, Darwinism, creationism and all that jazz.

We've had several of these conversations before and whilst we agree on some elements of what could, at its base level be defined as "belief", we're a few degrees apart when it comes to "God", who or whatever that may be. For many years, I would have described myself as a "strong atheist", though these days perhaps I'd be better described as a "strict agnostic" - the scientist in me suggests this to be better as we simply cannot know whether "God" exists or not, rather than the atheist view which states, matter-of-factly, the "God" does not exist. Perhaps I'm just hedging my bets as I get older!

Whichever way you spin the coin, ultimately I believe that it is one's belief in oneself that allows us to move on as humans. Darwin stated that 'it is not the strongest or most intelligent who survive, but those who are most adaptive to change' and there is much mileage in this.

Of course, what drives the inner beings' desire to change is, in itself, a contentious issue. Many would say that following a "leader's" move to change would classify as belief in that entity and could therefore accurately be defined as a ''religion'. The problem comes, of course, when the masses blindly follow the "leader" and allow logic, common sense, thousands of years of evolution and one's inner conscience to be ignored. It can be argued (and I do!) that such "fanatical religion" is the underlying cause of much of the world's strife and if people were to take a step back and look to one's inner-self rather than maintaining a blind belief in someone/thing that has never yet been proven to exist, we'd all be a bloody site better off. This of course is where we cross the line between religion and spirituality. That's another box of frogs entirely and something for another day. I can point you in the direction of James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy by way of an excellent text to get you started thinking about all this stuff, if you're one built of broad mind and intellectual independence, of course.

The carencia can provide an interesting analogy here. In bullfighting, the carencia is the part of the ring where the bull feels safest and the place where he will return time and time again when injured or threatened. He believes it to be a place of sanctuary whereas, of course, each time he returns there he exposes himself to ever increasing danger ultimately leading to his demise. Could the carencia be justifiably accepted as the bull's "religion"?

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Anyhow, enough of that. Our plans for the next couple of days have changed a little since Boxing day. I tired, and failed, to get on a trip today so instead we're taking it pretty easy having drunk all that beer (followed by another meal at the Casino and some apres-grub activity) last night. Hoopy's still in bed (very forgivable, it was gone 04:00 when he went to sleep!) and I've spent the morning doing odds and sods like postcards and buying his birthday present. Tonight, we're off to Dracula's, a themed restaurant which one enters by ghost train prior to dining whilst being entertained by "talented performers sinking their teeth into a bevy of highly visual, sexy and at times insane acts, including The Human Serpent Woman, Killer Clowns escape illusion, Black Art Puppets from the womb, Musical Instrument mime and The Trapese act from hell. All set to a rockin' song list with a sinister 'carnie' sideshow spin."

Should be a larf, eh?

Tomorrow, our last in Melbourne (thank fuck - we still have no affinity for the place whatsoever!), we're off to do the Great Ocean Road Adventure, an escorted trip taking in Geelong, Bell's Beach (home of the world surfing championships), the twelve apostles and, it says here, the tragic story of the Loch Ard.

A bit blue-rinse brigade for us possibly, but it'll be nice to let someone else take charge of the day's events and will keep us out of the pub - a good thing as we have to be up at sparrow's fart on Saturday to get our flight up to Sydney. Looks like the 5th-8th of January is my window for a final adventure away from pre-planned cricket and ancillary activities. A return to Tasmania is still a pissoboloty, as are visits to Uluru, the Barrier Reef, Canberra or Darwin. Or I may run out of money and do nothing. Who knows? Maybe God. ;-)