Evolution and the Bible - preliminary thoughts

Listening to: Sufjan Stevens: Illonois

I'm involved in a continuing discussion with a colleague who is also studying a Biology degree. I am bit at sea in our discussions, and as such probably confirming all her worst suspicions about Christians - although she is a very nice person, so maybe she's being more charitable to me than I deserve. Among other things it has forced me to think over what I actually believe about the Creation Narrative and Evolution - a question I've put on the back burner for years.

I would greatly appreciate criticisms on this marking post for my thinking at the moment, and pointers for other directions to consider. Please don't give it any weight in your own thinking on this matter.

With thanks in anticipation, here are my thoughts so far:

1. Richard Dawkins is right to criticise Christians who close their eyes to the world and do not see the beauty and challenges that science reveals.
2. Richard Dawkins is right to criticise the concept of Non-overlapping magisteria. There is overlap because God is the Creator and still creating. However, there there is not complete overlap between Biblical knowledge and Scientific knowledge. It is best to speak of partially overlapping magisteria which inform one another over their whole range of knowledge. Christianity is rooted in God's historical acts, but science proceeds on the basis of Christian presuppositions (leaning on Polanyi, Newbigin, Torrance, Gunton, Lewis and Plantinga).
3. Quantum theory and postmodernism teach that the answers you get are determined by the questions you ask. There is truth, although only partial truth in this. The theory of Evolution is the answer to the question "how could life have developed in a world where God is uninvolved?" Having said that, it is difficult to know how science could answer the simpler question: "how has life developed?".
4. The philosophy put forward by popularisers of science seems unable to deal with 'the one and the many'. Often it seems to drift to 'the one' and put forward some kind of pantheism where there is no distinction between humans and animals, and our purpose is derived entirely from the whole. Less palatabley it emphasises 'the many' and suggests we are all out for ourselves, each trying to enjoy life while it lasts with no purpose outside of our own existence. Trinitarian Christian theology is much better at doing justice to both the one and the many and relating them together (no doubt Colin Gunton would say something better).
5. Evolution explains how life develops but doesn't explain how life began.
6. The distinction between macro and micro evolution is not in the Bible and not in science.
7. The biggest problem I can see with an old earth from a Biblical point of view is that the Bible seems to teach as foundational that the universe was not always marked by death and decay.
8. I just don't understand how Intelligent Design is any different from the God of the Gaps.
9. John Walton is a gifted speaker. I think he is right that Genesis is more concerned with the creating of function than creating of material, but it would be wrong to say that it is only concerned with the creating of function. Which then leaves the question of what Genesis is saying about the creating of material (not 'how much it is saying about the creating of material').
10. Naturalistic evolution is self-refuting (as Lewis and Plantinga have argued).
11. What does it mean to "know nothing except Christ crucified" in this discussion?