Don't play word games. Intraspecies variation and adaptation (finches beaks) is not disputed even in religious circles.
It's the baseless and unobserved extrapolatian to speciation that's debated.
Horse hockey..
It's all about the monkeys.. our ancestors..
You are all aghast and mortified at being descended from apes..
Ooock.. Ooock.. That's Gran'paw saying, "hello, sonny"..
"It's the baseless and unobserved extrapolatian to speciation that's debated."
"Speciation" is not debated by anyone serious. I am a petroleum geologist and engineer. There are core samples all up and downt he Permian Basin. I can spot the time period of a sample just from the type of simple snail fossils --- slowly changing from tube worms, to sprials, to conical (and spirals), to different sizes, etc.
Each incremental change is minute --- but if you compare the last with the first (with a couple million years in between), one would never guess they were related.
It's cummulative changes of finches' beaks, so to speak, slowly drawing branches apart until they no longer are the same "species."
On the topic of "species," a species is largely defined simply by whether a typical male and female of the (purported) species can mate and have viable offspring without artificial help. (For example, a quarterhorse and a American Standard can have colts that can have their own offspring. In contrast, to give a close example, a horse and a donkey can mate and have offspring, but it's (generally) not viable.)
Arguably, there has been speciation (or something very close) even among normal dogs --- take a chihuaa and a great dane. Ain't gonna happen --- barring artificial help such as in-vitro or some similar method --- by which one could cross a human and a chimp, if one was inclined (Yes, it has been tried in China --- Google "human chimera" or "human chimp hybrid -- truly distribing. In fact, humans are actually closer genetically than lions and tigers --- Google "Liger.")
Anyway, back to the Chiuaua and the Great Dane. Same wild dog ancestors. Now they barely resemble each other. That happened in 200-300 years of selective breeding --- essentially artificial evolution to please man.
Given a couple MILLION years and repeated episodes of pressure (changing climate conditions, geographic isolation, new preditors, disease, whatever) the change would be much more dramatic --- distinct speciation.
Sure, each step would be mere "intraspecies variation and adaption") but add a couple million steps together and you have something completely different when the branches of the family tree are compared.
Before you get pummeled with a pile of observed speciation events, maybe you should define 'speciation' as you would accept it before any of us waste our time.