This is only half-true. Laboratory experiments are designed to isolate one or two objects of investigation, and need to shut out various complex interactions that occur in natural, uncontrolled environments, so that the objects under investigation can be clearly seen and measured. This has been the case since Galileo rolled the balls down the sloped surface. In the case of Lenski’s experiments, for example, the bacteria are fed and grow in an environment deliberately designed to and controlled so as to reveal certain things. If one was looking for different things, one would devise a different experiment. In the case of an experiment designed to see if bacteria could develop flagella, one would have to set up the artificial environment so that motility would give a selective advantage. If one wasn’t careful to do that, if other things in the setup gave the bacteria a different selective advantage, then the experiment would give muddled results.
But he doesn’t say either of these things. The words “natural capacity” are yours, not Behe’s.
You see? This is your question. And your “if” clause already biases the answer, since Behe hasn’t said “don’t exist naturally in life” – he has only said something about the limitations of the purported mutation/selection process – which is not all what goes on in life. Again, you are treating a subset of natural mechanisms as if they are all of natural mechanisms. That is like treating the subset “mammals”
as if they covered the whole set “vertebrates”.
Ah, so this is what your argument comes down to. You think that Behe is being deliberately dishonest with his readers. Therefore you allow yourself to impute any belief you like to him, even without evidence from his texts, on the assumption that he is trying to conceal the full import of what he means. You are in effect conversing with Behe (through me as intermediary) in bad faith, because you are not allowing that he says what he means, and means what he says. And in this habit you are typical of so many critics of ID. But tell me, do you regularly do this when you interact with other scientists? Do you regularly question their sincerity, their motives, etc.? I do not normally see such accusations in the technical scientific literature which you uphold as the model of good science. I see arguments against what other scientists claim, not imputations that they claim things they haven’t said.