Seems that if you are directing the mutation and doing the selecting it would also appear that -- whether you intended it or not or would even admit it for that matter-- you have actually lurched straight into making the case for Intellegent Design!
No, that's your assumption. If it were true, then the bacteria's genome would have to carry around with it every gene that any bacteria could possibly have in any particular environment! Do you really want to claim that actually happens?
Seems that if you are directing the mutation and doing the selecting it would also appear that -- whether you intended it or not or would even admit it for that matter-- you have actually lurched straight into making the case for Intellegent Design!
They're not directing the mutations. They simply let the natural mutation rate start pumping out mutations at random, just like it does in the wild. And of course they provide a selection pressure. It's an experiment, after all!
If the very fact that it's an experiment (which is designed by definition) invalidates the experiment, then that invalidates all experiments any scientist has ever conducted about anything. You really don't wanna go there, do you???