Or it might be that he has actually thought about these matters, and honestly found them confusing.

Possible but not likely. He seems to not be confused about the genuinely confusing aspects but more confused about the fact that he wants his religion to be true.

Among the contemporary high-status intellectuals who would enthusiastically affirm their belief in the theory of evolution and condemn all disbelievers in it, how many have a real understanding of it, and how many are just going along with the mainstream without any real understanding of the matter? I'

Oh certainly quite a lot. (In fact I just had a discussion with someone a few days ago who was bashing creationism and after a few minutes of discussion it was clear that the person had close to zero understanding of how evolution worked.)

Darwinian evolution is a very difficult subject, which requires a great deal of counterintuitive thinking to grasp with any degree of accuracy. Smart and well-informed people who oppose it often have interesting arguments that deserve a serious refutation rather than sneering.

This I disagree with. Smart people often have superficially plausible arguments often connected to their lack of actual understanding or investigation and religious motivation. The set of people who are both smart and well-informed and have a problem with evolution is tiny. This sort of claim would have been valid in the 1920s or 1930s or maybe even a bit later than that. But at this point evolution is understood well enough that failure to understand it reflects one's own ignorance or cognitive biases more than it says anything else.