Poll: What came first Chicken or the Egg?

[Magnatek]

Egg because of science etc, etc, can't be bothered to explain.

No one could effectively explain this if they tried. Even Charles Darwin himself must have had trouble with this question as well.

 

[Zombie Nixon]

an egg is just a tiny chicken

 

[Jaywebbs]

Egg...
Because even dinosaurs layed eggs, and from some of these dino´s the chicken evolved, so the egg came first.

Don't you know that the dinosaurs never existed that Jesus planted the bones back when the earth was made to test our faith? /sarcasm

 

[New Troll]

And God said, "Let there be chicken," and there was egg.

 

[CrystaltheEchidna]

And God said, "Let there be chicken," and there was egg.

by god i love yor theroy it makes totally senses without all the sciencey stuff not in it

 

[Seanchaidh]

The Egg evolved as a reproductive trait before the Chicken evolved as a species.

But for any particular chicken, the chicken is a chicken inside the hen before the hen starts growing a shell around it.

 

[mooncalf]

The Egg evolved as a reproductive trait before the Chicken evolved as a species.

Interesting thought, though we're talking about a chicken's egg in particular, aren't we? I guess I take that as read even though it's not explicit in the question.

I heard one answer to this conundrum that went "An Egg is a potential chicken, while a chicken is an actual chicken. As actuality precedes potentiality, the chicken came first."

In that case it is still the egg, if the Chicken came first that would prove Lamarckian evolution, which would be absurd.(ly crazy fun)

Yeesh! Did you bring that big word in here to impress me? I know what it means! *sigh* everyone blundering in with cries of "SIENSE! WOOO!" and missing the point. Consider this:

"Which came first, X that can't come without Y, or Y that can't come without X?"

That's the underlying form of the dilemma. Chicken or egg is an example from 300-odd BC and true it's lost some of it's relevance as the understanding of chickens and eggs has changed...

Lamarck is a name, not a word. It is a theory of evolution whilst living, which is to say, that an organism WILLS itself to change based on necessity, and these changes are inherited by the offspring. Bad explanation, so for example, a Giraffe ancestor cannot reach berries on a tree. It wills its neck to grow, and this new trait is heritable.

"Lamarckian Evolution" is not a person's name, and that is to what I was refering, and I did say I know what it was.

 

[CrystaltheEchidna]

The Egg evolved as a reproductive trait before the Chicken evolved as a species.

Interesting thought, though we're talking about a chicken's egg in particular, aren't we? I guess I take that as read even though it's not explicit in the question.

I heard one answer to this conundrum that went "An Egg is a potential chicken, while a chicken is an actual chicken. As actuality precedes potentiality, the chicken came first."

In that case it is still the egg, if the Chicken came first that would prove Lamarckian evolution, which would be absurd.(ly crazy fun)

Yeesh! Did you bring that big word in here to impress me? I know what it means! *sigh* everyone blundering in with cries of "SIENSE! WOOO!" and missing the point. Consider this:

"Which came first, X that can't come without Y, or Y that can't come without X?"

That's the underlying form of the dilemma. Chicken or egg is an example from 300-odd BC and true it's lost some of it's relevance as the understanding of chickens and eggs has changed...

Lamarck is a name, not a word. It is a theory of evolution whilst living, which is to say, that an organism WILLS itself to change based on necessity, and these changes are inherited by the offspring. Bad explanation, so for example, a Giraffe ancestor cannot reach berries on a tree. It wills its neck to grow, and this new trait is heritable.

"Lamarckian Evolution" is not a person's name, and that is to what I was refering, and I did say I know what it was.

i possibly i know you guys are debating about this maybe this calls for research.

 

[Asickorphan]

wouldn't it have to be "chickens"...

 

[CrystaltheEchidna]

wouldn't it have to be "chickens"...

not really anything really that lays eggs lizards,snake etc but i think il be right that chickens come first then the egg

 

[fletch_talon]

If we specify that we are referring to a chicken egg, then the answer isn't so obvious (anyone saying the chicken came first is wrong plain and simple because as has been said, fish/dinosaurs/etc. all laid eggs before the chicken developed).

So if we ask, which came first chicken or the chicken egg, then we need to determine what the definition of a chicken egg is. The possibilities and thus the answers are as follows:

a) An egg that came from a chicken parent. In other words an egg that is laid by an animal that can be considered a chicken. In this case the chicken must have come first.

or

b) An egg that contains a chicken, assumedly the first chicken. In this case we must determine whether the still developing creature within the egg can be labeled as a chicken or if it is not truly in existence until it is born or fully developed. So in this case the answer depending on your beliefs is either the egg or that they both came into existence at the same time.

Note: it is likely that the answer to definition b) is indeed both, because the egg cannot accurately be labeled a "chicken" egg, until the creature inside it can be labeled a chicken.

 

[PurpleRain]

[HEADING=1]EVOLUTION![/HEADING]

And thus I spoke.

 

[Skeleon]

"Which came first, X that can't come without Y, or Y that can't come without X?"

If we get rid of the faulty chicken-argument and reduce it to this, then I'd have to answer with this:

a circle has no beggining

The thing is that life as a whole isn't a circle (it started at some point and it will probably end at some point), so any animal-based argument doesn't fit the X and Y premise.

 

[CrystaltheEchidna]

"Which came first, X that can't come without Y, or Y that can't come without X?"

If we get rid of the faulty chicken-argument and reduce it to this, then I'd have to answer with this:

a circle has no beggining

The thing is that life as a whole isn't a circle (it started at some point and it will probably end at some point), so any animal-based argument doesn't fit the X and Y premise.

therfore meaning what? the egg has to be laid to become a chicken therefore i think chicken came first BEFORE the egg

 

[jobobob]

According to evolution the egg was laid then over many generations the chicken came, and then we ate it.

 

[Skeleon]

therfore meaning what? the egg has to be laid to become a chicken therefore i think chicken came first BEFORE the egg

Sigh. The animal doesn't work as an example because before the first thing we'd call a chicken came a chicken ancestor that laid the egg. So the egg from whence the first chicken hatched came first. But if we look at the chicken ancestor, there would've had to be an ancestor to it to, laying an egg...
And thus we go backwards and backwards through time to the point where there is a starting point of life of some kind (some would say God, others random cohesion of amino acids and DNA strands). Chicken and egg aren't really circular, they are linear.
That's why I said "let's get rid of that analogy" and reduce it to the meaning behind it.

 

[Thaius]

I'll be one of the few to risk (or possibly guarantee) ridicule and say God made the chicken, not the egg. The egg was how the chicken was designed to reproduce, but the animal itself was made originally made whole.

 

[Acaroid]

Well it depends what you call a chicken really, because chickens as we know now arnt really the same chickens of 100 or even 50 years ago (selective breading, more or less proves evolution in a way lol)

 

[Sixties Spidey]

The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster plucked forth from his saucy heaven both a chicken and an egg. After not being able to decide between an omelet or nuggets, he unceremoniously threw the chicken and egg over His Great Meatbally Shoulder. The chicken and the egg both landed on Earth at exactly the same time, thus this argument is moot because they were here together all along.

Oookay... I take it you're a South Park Fan. What with you mentioning a Flying Spaghetti Monster...

*Mmmm... Flying spaghetti...*