Since you are at about six pages of responses now, I wanted to address the OP again. What do you really mean by Darwin's Illusion? Based on what I have read and the responses you have received, the following does not represent an illusion that Darwin was under. So you must mean something else you aren't discussing here.
Darwin believed that life can be explained by natural selection based on his expectation that organic life was exceedingly simple.
Darwin did not believe that life could be explained by natural selection. He concluded that the change in populations of living things over time (evolution) was driven by natural selection. He based this conclusion on an exceptionally robust review of the evidence he observed over many years. The theory of evolution that he proposed is not a theory of the origin of life.
On what basis do you conclude that Darwin thought that life was exceedingly simple? What relevance would his view on the complexity of life have with the validity of evolution as a phenomenon and a theory? Perhaps his favorite color was red too. So what?
He lived in a time when people believed a brood of mice could suddenly appear in a basket of dirty clothes.
So what. Some of people of the time also thought that diseases were evil spirits. What some people of Darwin's time thought has no bearing on his formulation of a theory of evolution or the validity of it.
In other words Darwin was under the illusion that life could appear spontaneously under the right conditions.
You have been shown that this statement is unsupported and there is no reason to think it correct. You have even admitted that you had no basis to include it. Why knowingly include misleading statements about a creationist concept alleging that Darwin subscribed to it? Why not base your denial on verifiable information?
Based on this ignorance, he crafted an explanation for variation within a species, and formulated a theory explaining the process whereby life could arise from nonliving matter and mutate to the variety of living entities we see today.
Incorrect. Darwin formulated no such theory of the origin of life. He formulated a theory of evolution (change in populations over time and descent with adaptation) and proposed a mechanism for the observed change in populations.
Seems like you are just smearing a man dead 140 years in hopes that smears a scientific theory that challenges some personal religious doctrines and interpretations. Darwin is recognized for his valuable contributions to science and our continuing understanding of biology. He is not seen as a prophet of some religion. We have moved on from the basis he built.
It is postulated that this narrative has been overwhelmingly accepted in educated circles for more than a century even though the basic mechanisms of organic life remained a mystery until several decades ago- as a convenient alternative to belief in a creator.
Not the narrative you have provided. Your narrative has been falsified. The actual theory isn't an alternative to belief in a Creator and wasn't offered as such. Many more theists accept the theory than there are atheists. These so called mysteries have added detail to the theory, but clearly the basis of the theory did not require them. Mysteries, I might add, that were found using the science that you seem to deny has value.
After 1950 biochemistry has come to understand that living matters is more complex than Darwin could ever have dreamed of.
This may be the only valid statement you made and it is completely irrelevant to the validity of the theory of evolution. Considering what has been learned in the last 150 years, what any scientist of Darwin's time dreamed would pale in comparison to what we have discovered in that intervening time.
So, in view of this, what happened to Darwin allegedly elegant and simple idea ?
It became the basis of modern biology.
Although not a single sector of Darwinic evolution can offer uncontested proof that it is nothing more than a imaginative theory it is acclaimed by mainstream scientists as a science.
It has been pointed out that your statements indicate a lack of understanding of science. Once again, and I feel certain not for the last time, nothing in science is offered as uncontested proof. Even the science that doesn't make you uncomfortable.
Lynn Margulis a distinguished University Professor of Biology puts it this way:
"History will ultimately judge neo-Darwinism as a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology"
She asks any molecular biologists to name a single, unambiguous example of the formation of a new species by the accumulation of mutations. Her challenge to date is still unmet.
She says " proponents of the standard theory [of evolution] wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin..."
Enough has been said by others to invalidate the relevance of these quote mines used to further smear someone whom you seem to believe is seen as some sort of messiah. As if smearing him will topple the acceptance of a valid, sound and useful scientific theory.
That irks some creationists to no end.