Darwin’s argument contains so many questionable assumptions, starting with his views about God, that it cannot be evaluated strictly as a work of hard science. It is not rigorously empirical in the way Mendel’s “Experiments in Plant Hybridization” is. To pick up Mendel’s concise and carefully reasoned paper after reading the circular and often cloudy arguments of the Origin is to enter a different realm of thought. Unlike Mendel’s, Darwin’s case depends on extra-scientific suppositions, the first of which is that the explanation of all natural phenomena is strictly material.
– Catholic writer George Sim Johnston: Did Darwin Get It right?: Catholics and the Theory of Evolution (Our Sunday Visitor. P. 23)
Has anyone ever said that they “believe in” Mendel or “believe in” Mendel’s theory?