World's longest-running Evolution Experiment a Complete Bust?

The Evolutionists have been running an experiment for quite a few years seeing if they can get some bacteria to evolve. And the question is, after all this time has the experiment been successful, or a complete failure?

The E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) is an ongoing study in experimental evolution led by Richard Lenski that has been tracking genetic changes in 12 initially identical populations of asexual Escherichia coli bacteria since 24 February 1988. ... The populations reached 73,500 generations in early 2020, shortly before being frozen because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

"LTEE is the longest running microbial evolution experiment with more than 67,000 generations of E. coli, which is equivalent to over one million years of human evolution," Dr. McDonald explained.
Oct 24, 2017 by News Staff / Source
http://www.sci-news.com/biology/evolutionary-theory-e-coli-long-term-evolution-experiment-05354.html

Over the course of the experiment, Lenski and his colleagues have reported a wide array of phenotypic and genotypic changes in the evolving populations. These have included changes that have occurred in all 12 populations and others that have only appeared in one or a few populations. For example, all 12 populations showed a similar pattern of rapid improvement in fitness that decelerated over time, faster growth rates, and increased cell size. Half of the populations have evolved defects in DNA repair that have caused mutator phenotypes marked by elevated mutation rates. The most striking adaptation reported so far is the evolution of aerobic growth on citrate, which is unusual in E. coli, in one population at some point between generations 31,000 and 31,500.

Cit+ evolves in the LTEE
In 2008, Lenski's team, led by Zachary D. Blount, reported that the ability to grow aerobically on citrate had evolved in one population. ...
Lenski and his colleagues concluded that the evolution of the Cit+ function in this one population arose due to one or more earlier, possibly nonadaptive, "potentiating" mutations that increased the rate of mutation to an accessible level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

It would appear from this that they have had some success, but the question is, just in what? And they are not without their detractors. Though they have dismissed the complaint, a competitive team on the Intelligent Design side have questioned their results:

Criticism of citrate-usage findings
Other researchers have experimented on evolving aerobic citrate-utilizing E. coli. Dustin Van Hofwegen et al., working in the lab of intelligent design proponent Scott Minnich, ...
They concluded that the rarity of the citrate-utilizing mutant in Lenski's research was likely a result of the selective experimental conditions used by his team rather than being a unique evolutionary speciation event.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

So what do we make of all of this? By getting the E.coli to evolve have they proved evolution? Before answering that we need to consider just what does Evolution mean to the average person, and specifically to Christians?

How do we know that evolution is really happening?

Given enough time, these changes mount up and lead to the appearance of new species and new types of organism, one small change at a time. Step by step, worms became fish, fish came onto land and developed four legs, those four-legged animals grew hair and - eventually - some of them started walking around on two legs ...

"That's what evolution is," says Steve Jones of University College London in the UK. "It's a series of mistakes that build up."
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150803-how-do-we-know-evolution-is-real

That's pretty much the general idea I have had: fish to amphibians to reptiles. That sort of thing. Here's an example pic giving this sort of view, here fish to tetrapods:

So just what have the team derived so far? Well they started in 1988 with some E. coli, a bacteria, and 73,500 generations later, equivalent to over one million years of human evolution, we have ... E. coli? There's no new type of organism here. It's still E. coli and still a bacteria.

Hmm... am I missing something here?

Escherichia coli
Domain: Bacteria
Phylum: Proteobacteria
Class: Gammaproteobacteria
Order: Enterobacterales
Family: Enterobacteriaceae
Genus: Escherichia
Species: E. coli
Escherichia coli, also known as E. coli, is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacterium of the genus Escherichia that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms (endotherms).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli

Yet the team is claiming some form of evolution has happened:

The most striking adaptation reported so far is the evolution of aerobic growth on citrate, which is unusual in E. coli, in one population at some point between generations 31,000 and 31,500.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

But if we still have E. coli is this actually evolution or just natural selection?

Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations.
... natural selection is a key process in the evolution of a population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or rare within a population It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms and molecules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

According to this, Natural Selection is a key mechanism of evolution. But does that make natural selection evolution? And it looks like this is one difference between Evolutionists and Christians. Apparently any smell of natural selection and the Evolutionists cry Evolution! The Christians of course are just saying, wait a minute... this is only natural selection.

World's Longest Running E. coli Breeding Program

Now back to the E. coli, a bacteria. So you could think dogs and breeds. For example dachshunds.

So the team is breeding E. coli. That could relate to a breed of dog, say dachshund.

Then after 31,000 generations we get a dachshund that just wants to eat fruit. [I heard of someone who had a dog that only wanted to eat vegetables]. But this is a new breed of dachshund that would prefer to eat fruit. It's still a dog and it's still a dachshund. I think we'd be hard pressed to claim this as an evolutionary breakthrough.

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REFERENCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fishapod_evolution.jpg
A cladogram of the evolution of tetrapods showing the best-known transitional fossils. From bottom to top: Eusthenopteron, Panderichthys, Tiktaalik, Acanthostega, Ichthyostega, Pederpes.
Attribution: Maija Karala
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dachshund_brown_puppy.jpg
A Dachshund puppy
Attribution: harperlauren
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

E coli at 10000x
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:E_coli_at_10000x,_original.jpg
Public Domain

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Stephen Buckley
E-mail: greatesthoax [at] duck.com
Last revised: 1 Jul 2021.
Construction started about 24 Oct 2020.

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Page design/construction Stephen Buckley 2020.