Stop me if I’m mischacterizing your position.
But it seems to me you think the word “solely” up there is an essential aspect of the theory of evolution. Doesn’t that confuse methodical naturalism with philosophical naturalism? Doesn’t it do what I was complaining about in this thread:
Scientific theories don’t say anything about agency. They try to make sense of the order of the world by noticing predictable patterns in it. For the purposes of that, there is no need to invoke or to exclude the existence of God.
As a new believer with a background in science, apparently unlike others, I found no problem marrying naturalism with theism. I see God’s hand in everything. Just because I can answer a lot of “how” and “why” questions by reference to patterns science has uncovered, does not exclude the hand of God in those things. (Gary Fugle talks about this “dual causation” a lot in Laying Down Arms to Heal the Creation-Evolution Divide, very worthwhile if you’ve not already read it.) He doesn’t only live in the gaps.
Does it somehow insult God’s majesty to recognise that so much of his work conforms to patterns we can understand? I don’t think so. In fact I think it makes his Creation even more amazing.
What would it be like to live in a Universe where there was no predictability or order and everything was a random and unpredictable whim of God? It would be a very difficult place for humans to exercise free will, when actions don’t have predictable consequences.
In fact, much of Genesis 1 seems to be about God’s ordering of the Universe, not the creation of materials themselves.
The fact that He does this ordering, which is essential for humans to exercise free will, also fits well with the Christian idea that humans with mind and agency were integral to God’s plan (another key point of Genesis).
I do think there are things that it seems unlikely could be adequately understood by methodical naturalism. I trust the expertise and intentions of biologists who tell us the descent of species is not one of them.
But the existence of mind and agency, I think, has to be one of these. And the causation of the Big Bang. And the reason for the “laws of nature” and “constants of nature” being as they are. And, perhaps, abiogenesis.