Whenever the subject of who made us is brought up, the New Atheists start talking about evolution.
Which is another religion commonly masqueraded as "science" (atheists sure enjoy doing this)... Evolution is an unfalsifiable theory. New Atheists either do not realize this or are perfectly aware of it, but just flat out deny it to support their "religion is stupid" mantra... For all the "religion bashing" that they do, they sure do practice a heck of a lot of religion...
They have complete faith in one particular theory of evolution, a new version of Darwin's theory.
Correct. Faith is circular reasoning (they are synonymous terms), and religion begins and ends with an initial circular argument. The Theory of Evolution is one of many religions.
For one thing, that says nothing about how life started in the first place.
Correct. It doesn't. To be fair, that's not what Evolution is attempting to explain, though.
But it also does not explain how or why life evolved.
Well, you're right in that it doesn't explain it with certainty (no unfalsifiable theory can do so), but it does offer up a possible explanation for how/why life evolved which may or may not be true.
I agree with your general assertion, but the wording is a bit off again... What you mean instead of hypothesis is theory. A theory is an explanatory argument. That is what Evolution is attempting to do... it is attempting to explain how/why life evolved. A hypothesis is rather what one comes up with to answer the question 'How can I falsify this theory?' ... There are conceivable ways to falsify Evolution, however, one would need a working time machine in order to do so, so since those conceivable ways are currently inaccessible, Evolution is non-falsifiable, thus it remains a religion. -- In short, the word 'theory' is a better word to use because theory means "explanatory argument", which is what Evolution is.
The idea is that a non-living universe can create life through a long series of unlikely accidents.
This would actually be the Theory of Abiogenesis, which is one of numerous alternatives to the Theory of Creation which argues that the universe was designed by an 'Intelligent Designer'. Those two theories happen to contradict each other, therefore, if A is true, then B is false, and if B is true, then A is false.
Then, once life has started, accidental variations and natural selection take over and cause new species to be created.
This would be getting more into the Theory of Evolution again... I will point out that natural selection has actually been falsified. All it takes is one example to falsify a theory, and if organisms better adapted to suit their environment survive over ones which aren't, then there wouldn't be any albino varieties in existence today. Yet, there are... There also wouldn't be the vast variety of organisms that there are today (there would be little to no variety since the "less adapted" varieties would get weeded out)...
That is only ONE hypothesis about how life may have evolved.
Theory, not hypothesis, but yes, the general idea is correct.
It has never been observed and there are no experiments that demonstrate it. It is accepted merely because it does not require a living intelligent universe.
Generally correct.
A lot of people now days think that believing in an intelligent universe is somehow at odds with science. No, it does not contradict science at all. It only contradicts atheism and materialism.
Good point, and absolutely correct.
All of us who are scientific and educated believe in evolution. It has been demonstrated beyond doubt.
I wouldn't go quite that far, but I do generally find evolution to be convincing.
But we don't necessarily accept neo-Darwinism as the explanation.
Correct.
Overall, a post with a lot of good points being made, even if some of the specifics are a bit off.