Is atheism a scientific perspective?

[Chas]

No, I think I do understand it.

"Throughout the duration of the LTEE, there has existed an ecological opportunity in the form of an abundant, but unused, resource. DM25 medium contains not only glucose, but also citrate at a high concentration. The inability to use citrate as an energy source under oxic conditions has long been a defining characteristic of E. coli as a species. Nevertheless, E. coli is not wholly indifferent to citrate. It uses a ferric dicitrate transport system for iron acquisition, although citrate does not enter the cell in this process. It also has a complete tricarboxylic acid cycle, and can thus metabolize citrate internally during aerobic growth on other substrates. E. coli is able to ferment citrate under anoxic conditions if a cosubstrate is available for reducing power. The only known barrier to aerobic growth on citrate is its inability to transport citrate under oxic conditions. Indeed, atypical E. coli that grow aerobically on citrate (Cit+) have been isolated from agricultural and clinical settings, and were found to harbor plasmids, presumably acquired from other species, that encode citrate transporters."

Note that they say that the only known barrier to aerobic growth on citrate is its inability to tranport citrate under anoxic conditions. This is what I said.
here is the article:
Blout, Z.D., Borland, C.Z., Lenski, R.E., 2008. Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli. CrossMark. 105(23) 7899-7906.

Your original statement was a gross oversimplification of that:

And were you referring to the long term evolution experiment where the bacteria gained the ability to metabolize citrate? They already possessed the enzymes necessary to break it down, it's just that they could not take it in under aerobic conditions.

And that is not the only barrier.

And how about addressing the other issues?