Now, I'm starting with something that was said during one of our board meetings of the society.

This is by email and phone usually.

And I made the observation that the society is dominated by physical scientists.

Now, Steve Barr tries very hard to be fair-minded,

is very fair-minded.

I think he was a little concerned about that.

But as I hope I explained successfully to him,

this was not meant as a criticism of the society

of Catholic scientists.

It was a criticism of the larger society, and in particular, the society of biological

scientists. There are many polls that show that the majority of scientists, but especially

biological scientists, are either atheists or agnostic. Not quite as much the case for physical

sciences, but why is that the case?

Partly, this is historical, there's some bad blood, part of it is deserved, caused by suppression

of the teaching of evolution. But I think that's only part of the answer, and it doesn't quite explain

the implacable and blanket hostility of some

biologists against any and all religions. This has become something of a habit for us, but what

is this really about? And I like to say somewhat more thanly that biologists do not believe in the existence of life.

Well, of course they do, but they don't think much about what is meant by the term like life except in medical and other ethics when it becomes a matter of mostly procedural terms.

So a lot of the debate really is about vitalism. The battleground for biology other than evolution has been vitalism. Vitalism is dead.

But, as I like to say, if it's dead, it died an uneasy death and its ghost may walk the night.

The night. It's not entirely dead. And the problem is that we seem to need terms like life, like mind, like soul, or anima,

...