We took a trip back to the river recently and returned the remaining pond critters to their natual home. I think the only ones to survive were the snails. They were actually quite fun to watch - we think of them as doing very little, but they were actually pretty active. They don't swim, but they would just let go of things and float until they bumped into something else. Often, they would twist and twirl along the way - maybe it was their attempt at "steering" through the water.
Anyway, by the end of this whole thing, the water had cleared up beautifully and the smell was gone - just the snails remained. I'm guessing that the water had been pretty foul because of all of the dying organisms. The tiny pool that we had collected our sample from had been separated from the main river as it partially dries up for summer, so it was just loaded (perhaps overloaded) with tiny organisms. We looked at some under the microscope. Perhaps if we had taken our sample from the main river, it would not have been so "crowded."
All of this made me think about evolution and the idea that life worked itself out of a primordial soup. We had a life-infested soup and almost everything died. Certainly the snails would eventually die for lack of anything to eat if we hadn't taken them back. The odds of complex life working itself out of a similar - though not exact - situation seem so incredibly remote. Animals and organisms reproduce very quickly, yet the time it supposedly took for things to evolve and venture out of the soup was tremendously long. It seems to me that there would be a lot more death. Oh well, I'm sure evolutionists can come up with a convenient - hypothetical - explanation.
Just some thoughts and observations.
Comments
Jul. 7, 2006 - How interesting...
Posted by gabalot
I love that you pulled the evolution issue out for your children and us. I don't know as though I would have thought of that. You are completely right that the evolutionists would have some ridiculous explanation. Thanks for sharing this with us.
Jennifer