There's a pretty good biography of him on Wikipedia. It seems that he did his genetics research, recorded what he'd found, and went on being an Augustinian friar. Eventually he served as abbot - and that's another topic.
'As is Well Known' isn't Necessarily So
I suppose a rip-roaring tale of conspiracy, cover-up, and maybe even Elvis impersonators, could be told about the [expletive] Catholic Church suppressing Mendel's work because, 'as is well known,' Christians hate science.Which makes the Pontifical Academy of Sciences a trifle hard to explain: but I've noticed that mere facts don't get in the way of a really good conspiracy theory.
Now: Some Dull, Dusty, Old Facts
Like I said, Mendel recorded what he'd discovered about peas and bees: and moved on.A few decades later, someone else did pretty much the same thing, noticed that some friar had worked on the same questions earlier, and Gregor Mendel's name wound up in science textbooks: as well as less high-profile histories of Augustinian friars, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Which doesn't exist any more. Czechoslovakia, that is. It's called Czech Republic and Slovakia now. More topics.
Isn't Faith Contrary to Reason?
I've run into the occasional bunch of believers who seem determined to demonstrate that religious folks aren't playing with a full deck. And I'm all-too-well familiar with the lot who go ballistic at the mention of evolution.Which is part of the reason I converted to Catholicism. Yet more topics.
Bottom line, "...faith is not opposed to reason." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 35)
Which sounds reasonable to me.
Vaguely-related posts:
- "God's Creation: He Seems to Think Big"
(September 23, 2010) - "Science, Religion, and the Pope"
(September 17, 2010) - "It's Faith and Reason"
(June 19, 2010) - "Science vs. Religion: the Same Tired Old Line"
(June 5, 2010) - "Catholic Church, Creationism, Evolution, Facts and Faith"
(March 5, 2009)
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