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Post by Crabb90 on Apr 6, 2010 19:07:41 GMT -5
I think it's obvious the chicken came first through evolution.
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Philosoraptor
Moon
dangling prepositions is something up with which I shall not put
Posts: 145
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Post by Philosoraptor on Apr 6, 2010 19:15:34 GMT -5
I think the best and most concise answer to this question is, the egg. At some point in time, a creature that was 99.9999999999...% chicken laid an egg, out of which came a chicken.
It's misleading, though, because the 99.9999999999...% chicken would've been absolutely indistinguishable from any chicken that came after it.
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Post by Ryan on Apr 6, 2010 19:23:13 GMT -5
Semantics say the chicken came after the egg, b/c its parents were not chickens, but almost evolved into chickens.
Further semantics say that the first thing that laid an egg came before the first egg, since life evolved from bacteria.
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Post by stephen5000 on Apr 6, 2010 19:45:10 GMT -5
This question has been discussed a bit in a few different threads.
Ultimately, the question itself is flawed. It assumes perfection: that there is something that is "chicken" and something that is "chicken egg". For starters, many eggs do not give rise to chickens, and many chickens do not lay eggs. The question also ignores the concept of evolution (it first appeared long before evolution was popularized); it just assumes a perpetual cycle with an unknown beginning.
Chickens have and continue to change. What we consider a chicken today is different from what chickens were thousands of years ago (as are we humans for that matter). Eventually we may have chickens that are distinct species from chickens of the past (i.e. can't interbreed).
As to the philosophical question of which came first: X that must come from Y, or Y that must come from X; ultimately there is no answer (and thus nor beginning as such) unless we consider the possibility that at one point in time X or Y must have come from something else. What that was and which of X or Y did come first is up to be deduced based on the particular situation.
Now to apply this to the chicken case is not exactly proper. Eggs are basically part of the development of the chicken, so its bizarre to consider it distinct from an the adult chicken that it becomes. Also, every chicken is a distinct, different creature, not some generic cog in a perpetual cycle.
instead of ...->chicken->egg->chicken->egg->...
we should have:
...->chickenA->chickenB->chickenC->chickenD->...
When exactly we call a point in this chain (both past and future) not a chicken is up for some debate. Also, none of this discussion has related the fact that chicken reproduce sexually, so its really two chickens that produce each egg.
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Post by Trey on Apr 6, 2010 20:20:26 GMT -5
I'll tell you why it's such a hard question. YOU make it hard. Are chickens the only animals that make eggs? STOP focusing on the chicken for a second! Focus on what an egg is, and what makes them.
Lets just look at chordates (Animals with backbones). Birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and even mammals make eggs. Ok, so if all chordates make eggs, then we need to look at which chordate made eggs first. Well, Fish obviously! Fish made eggs before any other chordate. If fish were making eggs long before chickens even existed, then the answer is verrry simple. The egg came before the chicken.
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Post by chelseeyuh on Apr 6, 2010 20:31:46 GMT -5
Dinosaurs laid eggs before chickens even existed.. so the egg came first.
But if you mean the chicken or the chicken egg, see philosoraptor's answer... Either way, it's the egg.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2010 7:34:02 GMT -5
general egg (as in nautical creatures or dinosauwers) before chicken
and also chicken egg before chicken, as you have the egg and the chick starts growing in that, so the egg exists before the creature we call chicken. though the basic cells of the chicken exist before the egg imo.
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kernoll
Meteor
Why so serious?
Posts: 63
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Post by kernoll on Apr 7, 2010 8:32:45 GMT -5
Egg. It think this is one of the most discussed ideas on the internet. I thought it is only a matter of time till somebody make this thread...
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Nakor
Star
Non-Prophet
Posts: 991
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Post by Nakor on Apr 7, 2010 12:04:59 GMT -5
This question has been discussed a bit in a few different threads. Ultimately, the question itself is flawed. It assumes perfection: that there is something that is "chicken" and something that is "chicken egg". For starters, many eggs do not give rise to chickens, and many chickens do not lay eggs. The question also ignores the concept of evolution (it first appeared long before evolution was popularized); it just assumes a perpetual cycle with an unknown beginning. Chickens have and continue to change. What we consider a chicken today is different from what chickens were thousands of years ago (as are we humans for that matter). Eventually we may have chickens that are distinct species from chickens of the past (i.e. can't interbreed). As to the philosophical question of which came first: X that must come from Y, or Y that must come from X; ultimately there is no answer (and thus nor beginning as such) unless we consider the possibility that at one point in time X or Y must have come from something else. What that was and which of X or Y did come first is up to be deduced based on the particular situation. Now to apply this to the chicken case is not exactly proper. Eggs are basically part of the development of the chicken, so its bizarre to consider it distinct from an the adult chicken that it becomes. Also, every chicken is a distinct, different creature, not some generic cog in a perpetual cycle. instead of ...->chicken->egg->chicken->egg->... we should have: ...->chickenA->chickenB->chickenC->chickenD->... When exactly we call a point in this chain (both past and future) not a chicken is up for some debate. Also, none of this discussion has related the fact that chicken reproduce sexually, so its really two chickens that produce each egg. While all true, for the purposes of whether a chicken or a chicken egg came first, it doesn't actually matter where in the chain you consider a creature to be the first chicken, because no matter where in the chain that is, its egg came before it. Whatever critter you choose to call the first chicken (within reason -- calling lemurs chickens does not count for this lol) must still have come from its egg, the first chicken egg (that didn't get eaten prior to making a chicken, anyway -- but that doesn't change the egg coming first).
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Post by newschooled on Apr 7, 2010 13:04:01 GMT -5
The chicken came first and then said "I...I don't know what happened....I swear that's never happened to me before" OHSNAP!!!
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Post by Trey on Apr 7, 2010 13:56:12 GMT -5
SIMPLEST ANSWER OF ALL TIME. Even though, I kind of put a scientific answer, I'm going to post a very simple answer to this whole frickin thing...
Ask yourself, what came first: You, or your egg? YOUR EGG! BOOM SHOCK-A-LOCKA!
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Post by bombmaniac on Apr 7, 2010 15:04:37 GMT -5
well..if youre a creationist: the chicken if youre an evolutionist: the egg
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Nakor
Star
Non-Prophet
Posts: 991
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Post by Nakor on Apr 7, 2010 15:15:00 GMT -5
I still dislike that word "evolutionist." Why do we need words for people who use common sense. We don't have a word for people who believe the Earth is the third planet from the sun, or a word for people who believe that apples grow on trees.
I guess it's not a big deal, but the word started because creationists used it in a poor attempt to redefine evolution as a faith or religion similar to their own.
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Post by Jake on Apr 7, 2010 15:23:27 GMT -5
I still dislike that word "evolutionist." Why do we need words for people who use common sense. We don't have a word for people who believe the Earth is the third planet from the sun, or a word for people who believe that apples grow on trees. I guess it's not a big deal, but the word started because creationists used it in a poor attempt to redefine evolution as a faith or religion similar to their own. In Creationist's defence, they probably think the exact same in terms of "Why do we need a word for what we believe. We don't have a word for the belief that Apples grow on trees". This is because the most inconvenient thing when it comes to discusses involving religion/atheism is that both sides very strongly believe they are right.
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Nakor
Star
Non-Prophet
Posts: 991
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Post by Nakor on Apr 7, 2010 15:34:11 GMT -5
Okay, but there's a difference between most religion, which while not based on evidence at least doesn't contradict any of it (or much of it) either, and extreme positions such as creationism which contradict dozens of fields of science.
If someone believed apples grew as tubers under the soil, and continued to believe that in spite of the fact that we showed them that they grow on trees, we'd call them a nut and nobody would think twice about it. We wouldn't think of ourselves as appletreeists just because there's some appletubist nut in the world. But with creationism it's different. We get labeled as "evolutionists" opposing their beliefs. Well, by that standard, I'm also a gravitist, scientist, grassisgreenist, skyisblueist and thermodynamicist, because I think gravity, science, grass being (usually) green, sky being (during most days) blue and the laws of thermodynamics are all true.
What I'm saying is, it's a really, really silly term. A pointless label by a large group of nuts that society says we have to be tolerant and understanding of simply because there's enough of them to warrant it.
Also, I think they called themselves creationists (at the very least I know they coined the term 'creationism').
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Post by bombmaniac on Apr 7, 2010 19:22:30 GMT -5
fine ill refer to you as a person who has been called an evolutionist by others but objects to the term because he feels he is so right that there can be no other option at all. that bette? i think "evolutionist" takes up far less space than that
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Post by Trey on Apr 7, 2010 20:35:33 GMT -5
--The difference between Science and Creationism-- The Scientific Method: "Here's the facts. What conclusion can we draw from them?" The Creationist Method: "Here's the conclusion. What facts can we find to support it?" The next time I want to do an experiment, I'm going to use the scientific method
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Nakor
Star
Non-Prophet
Posts: 991
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Post by Nakor on Apr 7, 2010 20:49:37 GMT -5
fine ill refer to you as a person who has been called an evolutionist by others but objects to the term because he feels he is so right that there can be no other option at all. that bette? i think "evolutionist" takes up far less space than that "Rational" is shorter yet. And theories that are proven wrong are proven wrong.
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Post by bombmaniac on Apr 8, 2010 3:42:54 GMT -5
i think being offended at being called an "evolutionist" or a "creationist" is just being petty, its not like someone used a racial slur...
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imtwenty
Meteor
Can I put anything here and it will go underneath my name everywhere?
Posts: 73
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Post by imtwenty on Apr 8, 2010 10:50:01 GMT -5
I like to answer this question in an annoying way. Reptiles are older then chickens. Reptiles lay eggs. Reptile eggs existed before chickens. Therefore the egg came before the chicken.
HOWEVER! In the case of Chicken Egg v. Chicken, I am not so sure...
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