braindamage351

I know "What came first the chicken or the egg" is supposed to be some impossible to answer question, but it isn't. The chicken like all things slowly evolved from another animal. So one day an animal that was almost a chicken layed an egg, and when it hatched there was a baby chicken. It's not deep at all.

CoachAlan

Exactly, braindamage351. The answer to the evolution opponent's "Where are all the transition species?" is equally simple: They are all transition species.

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alpha

I knew that.

lost22coast

i consider the egg to be the universe. that's where some of the deepness comes into play for me. and there is no way to prove that some animal other than a chicken hatched the 1st egg. just like there is no way to prove that God created the 1st chicken to hatch the 1st egg. evolution might have caused it but there are some other things that could have happened instead. Just because something looks logical doesn't mean it is always correct. Just because Darwin proved that evolution takes place doesn't mean that evolution happened millions of years ago in terms of something other than a chicken laying the egg. Some alternative examples that come to mind are
1. God created everything and made evolution look possible to keep people guessing.
2. Some Aliens are bored and decide to make planets to rule over. Like having pets or keeping up a nice yard, the aliens make nice planets.
3. This is the most advanced computer sim ever and you are one of the main character. Some 14 year old kid 50 million years from now is playing the newest game: SimCity 50million.
4. Life is nothing but a long dream and your mind has invented everything in the dream so it is you that has created the egg and the chicken.
5. Before the earth is as we know it, there was a period of middle earth, where magicians and magic were common. A magician named Gandolf created a chicken because he wanted something new to eat. It was so good he decided to create a new chicken that would make it own chicken. Hence the egg was born.
6. Anything stupid thing anyone can come up with
All are just as valid. Unless you were there or know someone who was it is an unanswerable question. i personally think science is just as hooky as religion. it definitely has it uses for current day applications but people treat science as if it is fact. Science is always changing and some facts 1000's of years ago seem ludicrous to us now. maybe in a million years from now people will look at darwins theory as wrong in the same way that we laugh at the people who thought the earth was flat. I'm not saying that it is wrong, i'm just saying that there are other possibilities.

CoachAlan

One of the things that makes science unique is its objectivity. What I mean is that even though two people may, for example, feel the force of a shove differently, proper application of science can tell us that the force was exactly 200 newtons.

Another thing science has to offer is predictability. In fact, that's the main thing for which science is used. Sure, there are plenty of wacky theories that could explain the world around us. Science's interest is in determining which theory can accurately predict future outcomes.

Science doesn't have all the answers right now, and it probably never will, but it has shed light on questions that theologians couldn't even reasonably approach. All we can really know, as Descartes said, it that we exist. Everything beyond that is just a measure of predictability. For those measures, science is very useful.

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prosequence

I had eggs for breakfast.

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slimshaydee

i had chicken for lunch yesterday. therefore the chicken came first

CoachAlan

If I'm not mistaken, breakfast comes before lunch, so prosequence's EGGS came first.

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Willravel

If you have fried chicken, which containes both chicken and eggs, does God exist?

asaris

Actually, the chicken came first, since Genesis clearly states that God created all manner of fowl, but never says that he created eggs.

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"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

prosequence

True, however, it doesn't mention him creating atheists, and we seem to have some of those kicking around.

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asaris

Are you kidding? Genesis 1:26:

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Zdragva

LOL@ asaris, that rules

xxjuicesxx

fffffffffggg hhhhhhhhhgg

Dwayne

YES!! Someone else hit my entire egg argument right on the nose. The Chicken egg came first but not from an actual chicken! Of course this is if evolution is true. Creationists will probably say the chicken came first.

roboshark

If the egg was laid by an animal that cannot be called a chicken (for then surely, the chicken would have come first), then said egg cannot contain a chicken. Since the egg was laid by a non-chicken, basically, there were eggs before there were chicken. The egg came first.

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edmos1

I believe Bobby answered this philosophical conundrum inhttp://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=50069

zen_tom

Chicken/Egg - It's a koan - the only way to answer is to transcend the paradoxical trap embedded in the question. Likewise, Man/God.

CSflim

Taken literally, there is no paradox at all, which is what the thread starter was pointing out.

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zen_tom

As you say, taken literally, and with knowledge and acceptance of gradual evolution there is no paradox - but the whole evoutionary concept was something I'd guess wasn't around when the chicken/egg idea started off.

And now people are going "Egg, Chyeah!" - there's progress for you!

cybersharp

Well i would say that the egg came first.
Because chances are that if the animal who was (almost) a chikan laid a egg then it is mostly probably that, the animal who laided the chikan in the egg came from a egg...Thus originating from egg's....

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Baneknight

Ahhh, but if the egg came first, what kind of egg was it? Was it a chicken egg, since a chicken will be born from it? Or will it be a proto-chicken egg (a proto-chicken is what I call the pre-evolved for of the chicken), since the egg came from a proto-chicken? Of course this all takes evolution as a fact, when it's really a theory (although I am inclined believe in it). Your thoughts?

welshbyte

Usually, if i ever think about this question, maybe to stop myself from going crazy, i land on the same conclusion as the first post in this thread stated. However, if you're talking about it with other people and in terms of philosophical arguments, then there is always going to be someone else looking at it in a different way according to their beliefs and knowledge of abstract concepts like evolution. My new conclusion is that the question is only half a question and this is why people have been debating and arguing about it for years and years. It's only half a question because it lacks context. I have always agreed with the principal that to get the right answer, you must first ask the right question. "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" lacks context and is only half a question so i'm resigned to not giving it much thought ever again.

For clarity, a simpler example of a question that lacks context would be one astronaut in space asking another astronaut in space for the time. He could look at his watch and say "It's 3:25pm" but then all the other astronauts would argue that it wasnt because they came from different time zones. The full question could be "What is the time in Greenwich, London?". This is a full question which can be answered without provoking too much disagreement.

A three hundred word question which requires a one word answer can be more powerful than a 2 word question which requires an essay as an answer.

You had to ask

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adysav

The saying most likely originates from a time when it was believed that the world always has been as it is now, and so the question is rhetorical and intended to convey the pointlessness in trying to find the origins of a seemingly unending cycle.

On a slightly different note, a scientific theory is not quite what most people seem to think it is.
"As used in science, a theory is an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena."
Tested and confirmed are the key words here I think. A scientific theory is not an 'idea' a 'possibility' for us to believe in or not, and not something that two people in lab coats concocted during a coffee break.

When scientists refer to something that is an unsubstantiated idea or prediction, it is called a hypothesis.
When a hypothesis has been rigorously tested and proven to accurate, it becomes a theory. That last bit is probably an oversimplification, but that's the general gist of it.

Back to the chicken question and factoring in evolution, the egg came first.
The egg that the chicken came from was always going to produce a chicken, they are effectively the same thing, it's just a baby chicken.
Due to genetic variation, their would be a point when a bird very much like a chicken gave birth to a modern day baby chicken. Finding that particular moment would be impossible but that's not the point of this really.
It's similar to how you are not exactly the same as your parents. These things happen slowly and gradually over time.

Baneknight

Oh, I see thanks Adysav, I was kinda wondering why it was "Theory" and not "Fact". Like in the "Theory of Relativaty" right?

DJ Happy

The egg came first, but only because the chicken was a particularly thoughtful and sensitive lover.

Ruse

Seems to me that the question isn’t whether or not the chicken came before the egg or vice versa, it’s a question on what you believe.

If you have a more scientific view on how the world came to be then the egg came first because it was just carrying on the evolution of the ever incomplete pre-"chicken".

If you have a religious view then you might think that the chicken came first because "God said so."

If you’re looking at it from the point where the egg is mankind and a higher being is the chicken then views are similar to the above.. maybe man created God or God created man. It’s just a vicious circle of beliefs and counter beliefs in my opinion.

Scrappy

I think I've got it.

Scientific Views would say that the egg came first (As it came from an animal that was not a chicken, using the theory of evolution)

BUT

In a religious view, maybe God created the egg that the first chicken hatched from and watched over it, thus saying that "maybe the egg did come first" This is just as plausible as having a chicken made from dust into an adult, so lets say that half of those with a religious view of "God said so" can aquiesce to that idea.

we can also assume that any other world views would be equally split on this issue, as it has never been resolved.

so if most of the scientific community and half of the religious community and half of the other slice of the pie agree, then that would mean that the majority of the world's population would choose the egg over the chicken!

SO we can then assume that the chicken does not come before the egg, breakfest comes before dinner, and that roosters do not involve themselves in matters of philosophy and theology.

That is my theory, no matter how full of holes it has (every theory has them)

Master_Shake

Ah, but what if a pre-chicken was mutated during its lifetime by exposure to radioactivity in such a way that the mutation completed the "chickeness" of the animal and made it a chicken.

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omid

lmao. for some reason that made me laugh really hard.

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ChaosWolf

The chicken or the egg...

But what if, say, you have eggs for breakfast then later have chicken-salad for lunch... do you ever wonder if the eggs might've came from that chicken?

So, it doesn't really matter which came first... they are both delicious.

Stug

I actually had to answer this question once in a game of Trivial Pursuits (Genus Edition - Board game). Q. Which came first the chicken or the egg?
A. The Egg

Explanation: In evolutionary terms even some dinosaurs were laying eggs before the chicken even existed.

So there it is...

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Suave

While we're talking about science, and the "objectivity" of it, we would do well to note that science only has the potential for objectivity. It is not, in the hands of any human being, an objective construct. It may come close to objectivity in some cases, but science cannot be objective so long as it is simply a tool of humanity.

joe69

sure it did. what else?

kd4

it takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than in religion. think about it, we were lucky enough out of an infinite amount of variables to become what we are today, a species able to change our surroudings to the extent we have now.

zen_tom

Sorry kd4, but that argument doesn't stand up. If those millions of variables HADN'T have added up the way they did, you wouldn't be able to (incorrectly) believe that it was anything other than a matter of selection and self-organisation. (i.e. there's been a whole lot more time gone under the bridge than you seem to realise)

If anything, the way that nature has shown herself to work makes creatures like us inevitable.

Zeraph

What if the chicken came with and egg inside it? Then its both.

Kagemusha222

So the chicken and the egg are in bed.
The chicken is looking dejected and under the covers.
The egg on the otherhand is content and smoking a cig
The egg looks over to the chicken and says "I guess we answered that question"

zen_tom

Now THAT is funny.

planets

what about... The chicken like all things slowly evolved from another animal. So one day an animal that was almost-a-chicken laid an almost-a-chicken kinda egg, and when it hatched there was an almost-a-chicken, which then morphed into a chicken, which would then go on to lay the first chicken egg.

That way the chicken came first!

alternatively, consider the analogy between "chickens lay eggs", with "guys lay gals". Since guys come much more easily than girls, it is highly probable that the chicken came first.