I can understand being impatient with scientists who insist that "the entire universe reduces to the physical, or the material," or that we know what we don't know. As a subscriber to some alternative health practices, I'm well aware that a lot of people refuse to accept anything they don't understand. I remember sitting at a dinner party next to a doctor who was scoffing at the idea that someone's mood could affect their health outcome. A couple of years later, headline in the paper: "Mood affects health outcome, doctors say." (Anecdote slightly edited, of course.)
But while individual scientists, like the ones you quote, might make that kind of argument, "science" doesn't, nor does "evolution." I don't think it's a bad thing to investigate whether consciousness is an epiphenomenon or emergent property of a physical brain. But the whole single-cell creatures to multicell creatures, dinosaurs to birds, proto-humans to humans edifice doesn't depend on that answer.
Robert Godwin is a clinical and forensic psychologist and philosopher. Jeepers, I hope you don't disparage these outstanding thinkers simply because they're "philosophers!"
The only reason I mentioned his background is that he's insisting on a firm dividing line between life and matter and disparaging biochemists who see a fuzzier division. I couldn't help but wonder whether if he were a biochemist himself, he might have a deeper understanding of the question. I'd wonder the same thing about a biochemist disparaging a psychologist's statement about human behavior.
It's very simple: As an historical "science," it calls for things that are not directly testable. It calls for things that not only have never been directly observed, but which cannot be directly observed in principle.
[Of course, I am here speaking of the macroevolution component of the doctrine.]
In that very sense, it is no different than the offerings of any religious sect.