One comment I would add is that I have read elsewhere that Darwin had an additional motive to develop and promote atheistic ideas. His 10 year old daughter died of tuberculosis and there are numerous reports of how this devastated Darwin and his wife. If he could not believe in a God who created cats which played with mice, how much harder for him to believe in a God that would take his precious ten year old daughter. I have great sympathy for him in that perspective, but I think as you rightly point out, Darwin's objection was to the theology of the time. If so, it is another sad case of the baby being thrown out with the bath water.