Natural Selection: Changes vs Variation

I have been trying to argue on another site that Natural Selection is selection of favourable pre-existing variations and does not involve anything “changing” into something else.

I think the idea of “changes” carries implicit baggage of teleology and intent, and that plays into the hands of the Ken Hams of this world.

People have argued that it is “the genome” that changes. I have agreed that point mutations are indeed changes, but that they are not major players in evolution (at least in sexually reproductive species) as they are one-shot affairs and possibly more likely to be neutral or deleterious as beneficial. However, I have said there is no single, fixed reference genome to change: since everyone is different from everyone else, so everyone has a unique genome (excepting monozygotic twins). And that genome is not changed during the host animal’s life: crossing-over makes a new one for each child.

I have people castigating me as an illiterate creationist, or trying to explain natural selection to me.

I am trying to say that evolution is not selection of accumulated “changes” in anything, but accumulated favourable variations. Am I just gibbering here, or am I making a rational argument?