In reviews and private correspondence, scientists like Lyell and Hooker questioned the extravagant claims that Darwin made for natural selection. Darwin himself was increasingly plagued by doubts after the first edition of the Origin. In subsequent editions, he kept backing off from natural selection as the explanation for all natural phenomena. Loren Eiseley writes in Darwin’s Century that a “close examination of the last edition of the Origin reveals that in attempting on scattered pages to meet the objections being launched against his theory the much-laboured-upon volume had become contradictory. … The last repairs to the Origin reveal … how very shaky Darwin’s theoretical structure had become.”
– George Sim Johnston, Did Darwin Get It Right?: Catholics and the Theory of Evolution (OSV, 1998), p. 70
It was okay for Darwin himself to gradually cease to be a Darwinist.
(Note: Here’s the post on atheist and agnostic ID sympathizers, recently stuck to the top.)