How does Mendel's theory of inheritance support Darwin's theory of natural selection?

Answer 1

Mendel's laws deal with the transmission of genes between individuals. Evolution deals with changes in gene frequencies within and between populations.Population genetics, which mathematically analyzes how gene frequencies change over time in populations, is the backbone of evolutionary genetics, and it is based on Mendelian genetics being the transmission mechanism for individuals. So, the statement that Mendel's work "raises great obstacles" to evolutionary theory is simply ignorant and misleading.

Mendelian genetics support evolutionary theory in every way.

Actually, it doesn't. Darwin was unaware of Mendel's theory when he wrote his theory of Evolution (even though they lived at the same time), and because of the strong belief in Darwin's ideas it was not until the early 20'th century that the importance of the Mendelian theory was realized.

The Mendelian theory - because it showed that genes are own entities - raises great obstacles for the Darwinian theory. Natural selection operates on the organism level, rather than the gene level (the whole organism dies, if only one single fatal mutation occurs), which will mean that all the "good" mutations that need to add up during long time will get lost due only to a small number of fatal mutations, which makes it even more impossible for natural selection to give rise to something new which needs adding up of "good mutations".

The concept of "good mutations" - mutations that will be good only when many such mutations have been added together - is itself an erroneous way of thinking, because it builds on teleological reasoning (things get their "meaning" only after something has happened and you see the result) rather than causal reasoning ("cause gives effect"). Teleological reasoning is not rational in a naturalistic framework, because the only thing there is in such a framework is "cause gives effect".
There are alternate versions of a gene.