Does "the theory of evolution" say anything one way or another about how life began? My position, as you surely understood despite however poorly I may have phrased it, is No. Evolution, as it is usually stated and presented, actually explains how life... well... evolved, not how it "began". For that you need a theory of origins to go along with it.

If you insist I'm happy to go with your preferred formulation of "the theory of evolution" that is meant to encompass both, however. In that case, what is that theory's explanation for how "replicators formed out of non-replicating molecules"? It appears to be: they did so in some way, according to the laws of chemistry.

Is that really an "explanation"? It's practically begging the question. At the very least does it not raise a host of additional questions? Can/has this chemical replicators-from-non-replicators process be replicated? (Honestly curious, actually... come to think of it I don't actually know.) If not, why then and not now? Why does it not continually take place?

In other words, the origins-explanation is a weak link in your theory of evolution. Some gaps need to be filled in to that part of the explanation.

This doesn't mean "God" is in those gaps by any means :-) But nevertheless the existence and relative size of the gaps (with respect to the *rest* of the theory, which is quite well established!) should be explicitly acknowledged whenever that theory is presented. A stubborn refusal to do so looks, to me, like a counter-reaction to the reactionaries. And not only that, it's tactically unwise because it damages attempts to defend the remainder of the theory (which again, is quite sound).

P.S. I hate this because it makes me sound like some creationist and that's totally not what I'm about here.