Bunches
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Which came first, The Chicken or The Egg?
I voted:

b0rsuk
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maestro8
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Bunches wrote:
Which came first, The Chicken or The Egg?
I voted:

Click here to view the secret text

×Option 4.

As did I. It's a consequence of the fact that the entirety of reality is all just a figment of my twisted imagination. I don't know why I didn't imagine DROD earlier, though... it's been a great addition to my own personal Dreamplane.

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Ezlo
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b0rsuk wrote:

Click here to view the secret text

×
"It seems scientists and philosophers now agree which came first. The Egg. From the CNN article: 'Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life. Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg. Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, told the UK Press Association the pecking order was clear.' So, does this mean we can now show P=NP?"

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/26/1738217

Ahhh! But that only works if you think Evolution is the way things went. This question really boils down to how you think life began. If you like the Evolutionist side then yes, the egg came first. If you like the Creationist side then the chicken came first. But lets no get into Evolution vs Creation right now.

zex20913
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Dinosaurs came before chickens, and dinosaurs had eggs.

Therefore, the egg came first.

The chicken or the chicken egg is another question entirely.

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Neather2
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for me the chicken, many my friends say that the animals have been first

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eytanz
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Ezlo wrote:

Ahhh! But that only works if you think Evolution is the way things went. This question really boils down to how you think life began. If you like the Evolutionist side then yes, the egg came first. If you like the Creationist side then the chicken came first. But lets no get into Evolution vs Creation right now.

Not necessarily, it depends on what you mean by chicken. Assuming you are a Christian or Jewish creationist, and not one from a religion based on a text other than the bible, you must take Genesis as the story of creation. According to Genesis 1:21, the egg-layers (birds, fish, insects, reptiles and amphibians) were created together on the third day. Thus, chicken.

But, according to Genesis 2:20, it was Adam who named all the fowl. And Adam wasn't around until the 6th day. So, arguably, God created a white mostly flightless bird on the 3rd day, which then had to wait 3 days to become a chicken. In those three days, it's quite probable that something layed an egg. Thus, egg.

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Ezlo
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I was speaking in general terms as well. I'm sure that other people have theories that don't have to do with Evolution OR any Religion.

krepnox
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Everyone seems to be anwering the question philosophically. I think a more pragmatic approach works better. I have eggs for breakfast and chicken for dinner. Therefore, the egg comes first.

golfrman
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krepnox wrote:
Everyone seems to be anwering the question philosophically. I think a more pragmatic approach works better. I have eggs for breakfast and chicken for dinner. Therefore, the egg comes first.

lol thats a good one i think that if the egg came first then what hatched it?

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krepnox
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golfrman wrote:
thats a good one i think that if the egg came first then what hatched it?

Eggs are hatched?!?! I thought they came from the refrigerator.

Ezlo
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krepnox wrote:
Everyone seems to be anwering the question philosophically. I think a more pragmatic approach works better. I have eggs for breakfast and chicken for dinner. Therefore, the egg comes first.

Ah! But even that gets complicated! The Jewish believe that a new day begins at night, since God made a dark earth first and the he made light, so you would sometimes have Chicken first for dinner and sometimes egg first for breakfest depending on when you ate your dinner.

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Ezlo wrote:
Ah! But even that gets complicated! The Jewish believe that a new day begins at night, since God made a dark earth first and the he made light, so you would sometimes have Chicken first for dinner and sometimes egg first for breakfest depending on when you ate your dinner.

You're right. Good point. This leads to a couple of observations.

The first is how sibling rivalry suddenly rears its ugly head. My brother is observant, so for him the chicken would come before the egg. Unless the opening course is hard boiled eggs. I, however, am a pagan. (I worship idols and sacrifice goats. Virgins, when available.) So for me, the egg comes before the chicken. Much like Schroedinger's Cat, both answers are true. This leads to the realization that pragmatism cannot be divorced from philosophy.

My second observation is how much easier this would have been if the question had been, "Which comes first, the chicken or the antipasto?". (If the question were, "Which comes first, the chicken or the soup?", I think we would be back to familiar complications.)

Ezlo
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Hmmm... chicken Or antipasto? Still to vague. How about: Which came first, The Salad course or Desert?

krepnox
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Ezlo wrote:
Hmmm... chicken Or antipasto? Still to vague. How about: Which came first, The Salad course or Desert?

Chicken. Eggs. Salad. Soup. Antipasto. And now, dessert. I think the bigger question is how I am going to get my cholesterol under a thousand.

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zex20913 wrote:
The chicken or the chicken egg is another question entirely.

That depends, what makes it a chicken egg, is it a chicken egg because it was laid by a chicken, then the chicken came first, but if it's a chicken egg because there's a chicken inside, then the egg came first!

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golfrman
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krepnox wrote:

golfrman wrote:
thats a good one i think that if the egg came first then what hatched it?

Eggs are hatched?!?! I thought they came from the refrigerator.

no those are rhinocerous eggs, chicken eggs however are hatched

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Speaking of eggs and creation myths, the egg quite definitively comes first in some:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma#Creation wrote:
Creation

According to Puranas he is self-born (without mother) in the lotus which grows from the navel of Vishnu at the beginning of the universe. This explains his name Nabhija (born from the navel). Another legend says that Brahmā created himself by first creating water. In this he deposited a seed that later became the golden egg. From this golden egg, Brahma the creator was born, as Hiranyagarbha. The remaining materials of this golden egg expanded into the Brahm-anda or Universe. Being born in water, Brahmā is also called Kanja (born in water). Brahmā is said also to be the son of the Supreme Being, Brahman and his female energy, Maya. The beginning of the universe was the sound OM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangu wrote:
In the beginning there was nothing in the universe except a formless chaos. However this chaos began to coalesce into a cosmic egg for eighteen thousand years. Within it, the perfectly opposed principles of yin and yang became balanced and Pangu emerged (or woke up) from the egg. Pangu is usually depicted as a primitive, hairy giant clad in furs. Pangu set about the task of creating the world: he separated Yin from Yang with a swing of his giant axe, creating the Earth (murky Yin) and the Sky (clear Yang). To keep them separated, Pangu stood between them and pushed up the Sky. This task took eighteen thousand years, with each day the sky grew ten feet higher, the Earth ten feet wider, and Pangu ten feet taller. In some versions of the story, Pangu is aided in this task by the four most prominent beasts, namely the Turtle, the Qilin, the Phoenix, and the Dragon.
After the eighteen thousand years had elapsed, Pangu was laid to rest. His breath became the wind; his voice the thunder; left eye the sun and right eye the moon; his body became the mountains and extremes of the world; his blood formed rivers; his muscles the fertile lands; his facial hair the stars and milky way; his fur the bushes and forests; his bones the valuable minerals; his bone marrows sacred diamonds; his sweat fell as rain; and the little creatures on his body carried by the wind became human beings all over the world.

Although in others, the egg is laid by some kind of bird (although there are no explicit chickens).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_egg

---

Also, the egg came before the monkey.

In the Worlds before Monkey,
Primal chaos reigned, Heaven sought order.
But the Phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown.
The four worlds formed again and yet again,
As endless aeons wheeled and passed.
Time and the pure essences of Heaven,
The moistures of the Earth,
And the powers of the Sun and the Moon
All worked upon a certain rock - old as Creation,
And it magically became fertile.
That first egg was named Thought,
Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha,
Said, 'With our thoughts we make the world.'
Elemantal forces caused the egg to hatch,
from it then came a stone Monkey.
The nature of Monkey was irrepressable!

---

[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 07-21-2006 07:31 AM]

Znirk
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eytanz wrote:
according to Genesis 2:20, it was Adam who named all the fowl. And Adam wasn't around until the 6th day. So, arguably, God created a white mostly flightless bird on the 3rd day, which then had to wait 3 days to become a chicken. In those three days, it's quite probable that something layed an egg. Thus, egg.

So a nameless chicken is not a chicken, but a nameless egg is an egg? Interesting.

Bunches
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eytanz wrote:
according to Genesis 2:20, it was Adam who named all the fowl. And Adam wasn't around until the 6th day. So, arguably, God created a white mostly flightless bird on the 3rd day, which then had to wait 3 days to become a chicken. In those three days, it's quite probable that something layed an egg. Thus, egg.

But if you belive that God is God, then you know that God knew what Adam was going to name that bird; which means that the Chicken came first.

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I said chicken.

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[Last edited by Jason at 10-03-2007 09:48 AM]

Niccus
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Consider the following gedankenexperiment:

Two light bulbs are attached to two circuits, an indeterminate distance apart, but are at least a few light-seconds away (assume a sterile, ideal universe). These circuits have light detectors. When the light detectors detects light (preferably of a single band of frequencies, like visible light), they turn the light bulb on (and thus, when a bulb is first turned on, it never stays off 'til the battery dies).
There is a third body in the system, and it is able to override the light detectors and force the light bulbs to turn on (without using any emissions of light). If light bulb A turns on, the observer at A will see light bulb A first and later light bulb B. The observer at B will see light bulb B turning on very soon after light bulb A turns on. The case is reversible between "A" and "B."
Consider the case that this third object overrides both detectors at the same time. If the distance is not known, both observers will claim that the third object overrid their light detectors, and that their light bulbs activated the other circuits' light bulbs.

What does this have to do with the topic? Nothing. Consider the case when there are both chicken and egg at the same time, to begin this painful cycle of reproduction and possible pedophilia.

krepnox
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This question has certainly generated some interesting debate. Perhaps we should have started with something simpler - for example, the nature of truth or beauty.

It seems pretty clear that the potential answers to the chicken vs. egg question divide along all sorts of fault lines. Philosophical vs. pragmatic. Scientific vs. theological. And, even if we choose to examine the question theologically, that raises a question about which theological sources we should examine - Judeo/Christian, Hindu, Native American. Or even Norse mythology. I have also noticed that people referring to the same scriptural sources can arrive at opposite conclusions. Therefore, I propose a different thought experiment.

I had earlier referred to Schroedinger's Cat. (I know that I am misspelling the guy's name, but I cannot figure out how to generate an umlaut.) This was a thought experiment designed to demonstrate how things in the real or macro world are different from things in the quantum mechanical world. Imagine that a cat is placed into a box for a week with adequate food, water and air. A device is placed in the box that, if activated, will kill the cat. The mechanism that activates the device is powered by something that exhibits random behavior. However, the odds of the mechanism functioning within that week are exactly 50%.

Roll forward a week to the point where we are ready to open the box. In the real world, there is a 50/50 chance that the cat is either alive or dead. However, the point is that the cat is either alive OR dead - one or the other, but not both - and we will not discover the outcome until we open the box. In the quantum mechanical universe, the cat is BOTH alive AND dead up until the box is opened. In quantum mechanics, the act of observing an object also changes it. In this case, the act of opening the box and observing the cat collapses its wave functions and forces it to become either alive or dead. So, following Erwin Schroedinger's logic, I could just as easily decide that BOTH the chicken AND the egg came first.

Ironically, I am very allergic to cats. Most of my friends assume that this means that I hate cats, but they are wrong. I like cats. Properly prepared, they can be delicious. They taste just like chicken.

But not eggs.

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Hmm, considering the tendency of the Universe to repeat patterns on micro and macro levels, I have to say the Egg came first. The deduction is simple and is based on the fact that Egg comes first thing in the morning, usually accompanied by bacon, and you don't see Chicken until lunch or dinner, if at all.

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Bunches
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I'm having chicken for breakfast.

Jatopian
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Jason wrote:
I said chicken.

Your signature would imply that, yes.
The Goblin King is the Tisroc.

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eytanz
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Bunches wrote:

eytanz wrote:
according to Genesis 2:20, it was Adam who named all the fowl. And Adam wasn't around until the 6th day. So, arguably, God created a white mostly flightless bird on the 3rd day, which then had to wait 3 days to become a chicken. In those three days, it's quite probable that something layed an egg. Thus, egg.

But if you belive that God is God, then you know that God knew what Adam was going to name that bird; which means that the Chicken came first.

Well, that gets into the issue of free will vs. omniscience, which is a whole other can of worms.

Also, as a second point, note also that the bible says that God created the birds in the third day. It never says anything about how mature those birds were when God created them. It's perfectly compatible with everything in the bible if God created a bunch of chicken eggs on the third day that later hatched. Not necessarily likely, but God works in mysterious ways.

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But the eggs, to be hatched, need a chicken to keep them warm.




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[Last edited by Jason at 10-03-2007 09:49 AM]

Briareos
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Jason wrote:
But the eggs, to be hatched, need a chicken to keep them warm.

I bet a lot of people breeding eggs under infrared lamps will beg to differ...

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trick
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Yeah. Obviously, the King of All Cosmos hatched the eggs with his laser eyes. I mean, duh.

- Gerry