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Not sure when you took the Regent's but you seem to have some of the material wrong.

Most astronomy is not based on reproducible results.

Evolutionary theory does not address the origin of life and therefore does not start with nothing. It is a theory that proposes a mechanism to explain observations by biologists. Just like Gravitational Theory seeks to explain why things go splat.

Dude, you are way ahead of me!

I took the regents in 1975, by the time my daughter took honors bio at Bayonne HS 5 years ago, I could barely understand the first lesson! I only had a clue because I took bio in college too.

We complain about the state of the schools, but I must say that in science and math the cirriculumn today is much advanced over what I took.

And I always was terrible in math, so you can keep the astronomy, for my kid it was an "easy A", to me it is something I must take on faith. That is to say, I have faith that most astronomers are good people and aren't just making stuff up. I cannot judge it for myself. And no, I can't spell either. But my mother blamed the nuns for that.

"Most astronomy is not based on reproducible results.
Evolutionary theory does not address the origin of life and therefore does not start with nothing. It is a theory that proposes a mechanism to explain observations by biologists. Just like Gravitational Theory seeks to explain why things go splat."

And thus stated, evolutionary theory is fine and dandy.

However two problems do arise in the application:
1. Astronomy is rife with reports of observations that change the way we interpret the universe....The Big bang is the dominating theory but daily someone 'sees' something that questions or revises it. There is still a great deal of searching taking place.
2. Entirely on the other side of the coin, evolution as you define it picked up baggage when it was extended into the 'primordial soup' auto-start from nothing to life. It might be true, it might be sort of true, but there is such a hard-line opposition to any questioning of its truth that many of us (NOT religious) wonder about the lack of searching for new data that I noted exists in astronomy.

Why do those who seem to worship something that was not part of Darwin's findings also seem to fear being shown any other alternative?

Why does their debate seem always to turn to calling the other guy a moron or a raving Christian zealot?

The cataloging and taxonomy of stars, as I understand, has less gaping gaps and more consistency than that of the fossil and geological record. Yet there would be no scathing and brutal complaints from the astronomical community if a school board forced a "stellar evolution models are just theories" notice in astronomy books. For that's all any reputable scientist takes them to be.