Pete- I should have added in my post a direct answer to your "beetles are still beetle after countless generations" remark, because we have gone thru this before.

It is important...VERY important... to understand that the theory of Evolution does not claim that beetles, as a genus, MIGHT 'turn into' some other species!! Nor do alligators turn into giraffes...etc. You keep using that general idea as if it shows something, but it is a *trivial* fact. It is a 'straw man' in the argument.... and it is a complete misunderstanding of how evolution is claimed to operate.
On the other hand, when a batch of beetles is hatched and crawls off to look for food, it is the case that some can be lighter in color, and some darker, and this can affect how well they survive- depending on which trees they arrive at. Now - the question is...what is happening to give them variations in color?

Read this page, which mentions several species, including the Peppered Moth (which I may have meant instead of a beetle).

The point is, the color change is genetic! 'Something' happened to cause a change in a gene. Successive changes can make some very different moths..or beetles. A moth will not become a beetle, nor a beetle a moth....but in 40 million years, either a beetle OR a moth (that is, ONE LINE of moths) 'may' gradually end up as something that is not really a moth! Other 'lines' of that original moth may still look very similar to the original.
This is how it works! And you & I are not the result of an ape 'changing' into a human.... we are the end result of ONE line of descendants of ONE proto-ancestor of BOTH apes & humans.

Yes... I know I have now asserted exactly what you wish to deny with your various creationist points & claims... but all my assertions make sense as they are checked and integrated by many branches of science. Darwin didn't know one-thousandth of the details WE now know... he merely saw superficial indications which he could not ignore and wrote about them. The details have been revised for 150 years as we gain more knowledge about HOW it happens.

Scholars have also tried to revise certain data about the Bible based on new information about:...its language, translation¹, authors, missing parts, historical references, contradictions...etc.... but there is little cooperation among various sects & religions which have their mind sets and egos wrapped up in claims about *truth* based on interpretations of one part of one translation of one text...........and this is why the idea of "non-overlapping_magisteria" is tempting. Science & religion simply cannot agree because religion, in order to BE religious, cannot allow certain criteria to be applied. (This even applies to 'liberal' religions as well as fundamentalist religions.. just to a different degree).


1.(it has been shown clearly that translation was inaccurate in describing Mary as a 'virgin', for the original Aramaic meant merely a 'young girl', and Mary was evidently fairly young when she was married.) King James' hired scholars just said it in such compelling language that it was assumed to be... ummmm.. gospel.