Chicken or Egg?

[cmar1965]

This is an age-old question, but regardless, I thought it would be interesting to see who things what came first, and why.

I already have my own view as to this, but I would be interested in others perspectives.

[jeffweeder]

Well its simple really, just look at it logically.
If it was the egg, then we know it needs a chicken to sit on it, and moniter its temperature every now and again.
If it was the chicken, it would have become extinct in no time at all.

So its only possible with two chickens arriving on the scene at the same time....with a knowledge and an appetite for sex, which sums up the biblical creation account perfectly.......that things should multiply and actually fill the earth, and God made them male and female. It could be no other way.

[cmar1965]

Well its simple really, just look at it logically.
If it was the egg, then we know it needs a chicken to sit on it, and moniter its temperature every now and again.
If it was the chicken, it would have become extinct in no time at all.

So its only possible with two chickens arriving on the scene at the same time....with a knowledge and an appetite for sex, which sums up the biblical creation account perfectly.......that things should multiply and actually fill the earth, and God made them male and female. It could be no other way.

Hi Jeffweeder,

Thank you for your reply and I get where you are coming from, but I don't remember in the whole "creation" account, the mention of 2 (male and female of each animal) being mentioned, just that god allegedly created....., or that "knowledge" was intrinsic in chickens or any other living thing.. oh.. apart from humans of course! :naughtyy: The go forth and multiply was from what i have read, specifically aimed at humans to build nations..etc...

The whole "two by two" concept comes from dialogue pertaining to Noah's Ark, which is well past the creation account.

NOT a pisstake, I just want to understand where people are coming from, how they got to their own logical conclusion and why.

[jeffweeder]

Thank you for your reply and I get where you are coming from, but I don't remember in the whole "creation" account, the mention of 2 (male and female of each animal) being mentioned


I find it ignorant that you dont hve a bible to check these things.


GEN 1
Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens."
21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
22 God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."

Surely this suggests that we have male and female...


GEN 1
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves[39][Or creeps ] on the earth."



The whole "two by two" concept comes from dialogue pertaining to Noah's Ark, which is well past the creation account.


NoNo, im in chap 1, but surely you can see why God would have demanded that 2 of every animal would be selected to continue on the possibility of life on the planet.



I already have my own view as to this

so, what is it ?

[cmar1965]

Hi Jeffweeder,

your comment:
I find it ignorant that you dont hve a bible to check these things.

You own that feeling of ignorance Jeffweeder, but just to clarify from my own stance. I gave up years ago having a bible "at hand" to quote anything from. It was from memory, nothing more...my "bad".


Surely this suggests that we have male and female...

Certainly, the "suggestion" of such is there and that point I am more than willing to concede. The bible however "suggests" a lot and is open to varying interpretation. The bible however is definitive in the explanation of the differing human forms of male and female, just sketchy as to anything else.


NoNo, im in chap 1, but surely you can see why God would have demanded that 2 of every animal would be selected to continue on the possibility of life on the planet.

Hmm, that does not explain hybrids, new species or even extinction , but I do get where you are coming from, from your perspective. Given your above comment though, perhaps I should start a thread as to the validity of Noah's Ark! lol...that would be another thread though, so I digress...


[quote]so, what is it ?

The egg came first, bringing to the world, the chicken. It could well have been some natural mutation or natural cross breeding process.

[Resentedhalo]

The chicken came first, although it was not evolved as we currently know as a chicken... the egg I believe would have originally been a soft birth vacoule where the offspring would have dwelled, much like mammals...
As everything evolves it improves upon itself, generation after generation etc etc... the soft birth vacoule would have evolved into what is now a "hard" egg over great time... just as the chicken would have derived from another species.... evolution is the key :)


Resentedhalo.

[UVsaturated]

With God, you need neither one before another to give birth, for imagination is everything.

[coach]

This philosophical question is a great way to tie seemingly unrelated theories in science together to explain.

First of all, we need to establish how a change in a species can occur. Within any species that reproduces sexually, there is variation among many of the traits. Now if I was an ornithologist I could probably tell you what the difference is between the common chicken that we know and it's closest relatives, but unfortunately I can't. However, with that variation there are some traits that are more apt for the particular environment that the species lives in, some that are not and some that make no difference. According to Darwin (the most common theory) selective pressures will allow for particular traits to carry on and others to die out.

So, evolution of a chicken, I believe happened as follows (totally based on my understandings of genetics, evolution and other biological theories).

During meiosis (the development of sperm or ova) in a closely related species (lets call it ficken for arguments sake), a slight mutation occurs in the ovum (because we are talking of the egg, not the sperm). This ovum is fertilised and the zygote develops into a ficken that is still able mate with other ficken but slightly different, making it reproductively stronger - ie more able to survive to reproductive maturity.Being reproductively stronger, it passes it's genes onto the next generation and the next and the next. More subtle mutations arise through several generations. Each MUST arise in either the ovum or the sperm to be passed on to the next generation. Over time, although each difference is only a slight change on a previous generation, it is vastly different from the ficken and we call it the chicken. They are no longer able to mate with the ficken to produce viable offspring - much like the mule (donkey/horse) and liger (lion/tiger). We have a new species because this is one of the criteria used to differentiate species. This process could take thousands of generations or only hundreds depending on the other selective pressures that are around at the time.

To put it simply, each successive generation that had a slight change had to start with either the ovum (egg) or the sperm. I agree with cmar1965.

[cmar1965]

UVSaturated wrote"
With God, you need neither one before another to give birth, for imagination is everything

Umm... do you not have a mother who gave birth to you, UV?

Too, chickens don't GIVE BIRTH.

I do agree though that vivid imagination IS required as to "god" belief, so therefore to those whom DO "believe", it IS everything!

[Nasik]

This philosophical question is a great way to tie seemingly unrelated theories in science together to explain.

First of all, we need to establish how a change in a species can occur. Within any species that reproduces sexually, there is variation among many of the traits. Now if I was an ornithologist I could probably tell you what the difference is between the common chicken that we know and it's closest relatives, but unfortunately I can't. However, with that variation there are some traits that are more apt for the particular environment that the species lives in, some that are not and some that make no difference. According to Darwin (the most common theory) selective pressures will allow for particular traits to carry on and others to die out.

So, evolution of a chicken, I believe happened as follows (totally based on my understandings of genetics, evolution and other biological theories).

During meiosis (the development of sperm or ova) in a closely related species (lets call it ficken for arguments sake), a slight mutation occurs in the ovum (because we are talking of the egg, not the sperm). This ovum is fertilised and the zygote develops into a ficken that is still able mate with other ficken but slightly different, making it reproductively stronger - ie more able to survive to reproductive maturity.Being reproductively stronger, it passes it's genes onto the next generation and the next and the next. More subtle mutations arise through several generations. Each MUST arise in either the ovum or the sperm to be passed on to the next generation. Over time, although each difference is only a slight change on a previous generation, it is vastly different from the ficken and we call it the chicken. They are no longer able to mate with the ficken to produce viable offspring - much like the mule (donkey/horse) and liger (lion/tiger). We have a new species because this is one of the criteria used to differentiate species. This process could take thousands of generations or only hundreds depending on the other selective pressures that are around at the time.

To put it simply, each successive generation that had a slight change had to start with either the ovum (egg) or the sperm. I agree with cmar1965.


Nice summary, and I come to a different conclusion based on these facts. The original cell certainly did not replicate sexually, I believe it first replicated asexaully and sexual reproduction is an evolution of asexual reproduction, therefore, if asexual reproduction occurred first, surely it was the chicken that came first - figuratively speaking!

[coach]

freakedout,

Are you considering the original cell to be the first chicken cell - in which case it must be the fertilised egg- or the first living cell way back at the start of life - in which case it could not be a chicken as chickens are not unicellular prokaryotes.

given that chickens are Animalia Chordata Aves Phasianidae Gallus gallus, they do not reproduce asexually and therefore the the egg must have come first.

[Cartesiantheater]

My opinion is that the question is a remnant of a faulty human perspective. There was no point in time when there was a non-chicken turning into a chicken, nor would we even be able to tell if we had the entire geneology lined up temporaly.

There is no point in the geneology of any large organism where we could say "right here is where it changed."

We ask the question because it is part of humankind's survival strategy to impose its logical order onto the world, but the question simply doesn't have a physical answer.:0.02:

[cmar1965]

Cart,

Specifically in reference to this part:
There is no point in the geneology of any large organism where we could say "right here is where it changed."

So hypothetically; if a dark skinned, brown eyed african were to have sex with say someone of nordic decent...near albino white skin and blue eyes, and the offspring came out "coffee coloured" with blue eyes, would that not show the geneological "change" in one fell swoop?

[Cartesiantheater]

Cart,

Specifically in reference to this part:

So hypothetically; if a dark skinned, brown eyed african were to have sex with say someone of nordic decent...near albino white skin and blue eyes, and the offspring came out "coffee coloured" with blue eyes, would that not show the geneological "change" in one fell swoop?

Ah, but is that a change in species?


That doesn't quite show a "non-chicken into a chicken" relationship.

(of course, species are also arbitraily defined, but it is the definition we're working with, I had thought...)

[Nu Kua]

The egg had to come first. I do not know how and have no explanation for saying so, it simply feels right.
The egg had to come first because you don't just say "Abracadabra, CHICKEN!" and suddenly one appears from nowhere. The chicken evolved from the egg, and no, I do not know how to explain where or what the egg evolved from. But the attainment of life is an evolved and complicated process; life doesn't come from magic.

Forgive me, all you scientifically versed and minded people.

Incidentally, in the "Noah and the Ark, two of every animal thing", I am looking into the possibility that it was the DNA (or tissue samples from which it could be extracted) of the animals that was stored on the Ark, in order that life could be re-created, should "Noah" and his family and few other humans were with him survived.
The flood actually happened thousands of years before the Biblical Noah was attributed to these great acts of obedience and bravery. (I think, 11,000 years ago, give or take a bit)

Maybe that sounds crazy, but no less crazy than a boatload of thousands of animals making it out alive through a 40 day flood. Who fed them, who cleaned up their excrement? Can you imagine the smell?

[Nasik]

My opinion is that the question is a remnant of a faulty human perspective. There was no point in time when there was a non-chicken turning into a chicken, nor would we even be able to tell if we had the entire geneology lined up temporaly.

There is no point in the geneology of any large organism where we could say "right here is where it changed."

We ask the question because it is part of humankind's survival strategy to impose its logical order onto the world, but the question simply doesn't have a physical answer.:0.02:

Hey there.

I'm referring to the original question figuratively - going back in time to see what came first the egg or the creature - I'll let evolution fill in the blanks between then and now. Asexual reproduction is a more primitive type of reproduction and so, would have arrived before sexual reproduction (and any egg) so, the "chicken" came first.

[Cartesiantheater]

Hey there.

I'm referring to the original question figuratively - going back in time to see what came first the egg or the creature - I'll let evolution fill in the blanks between then and now. Asexual reproduction is a more primitive type of reproduction and so, would have arrived before sexual reproduction (and any egg) so, the "chicken" came first.

If you put it that way, I'm hardpressed to agree with you. Eggs can't have developed prior to some sort of social structure, or at least some clever use of the environment as protection from predators. Eggs are completely vulnerable and I think they'd be a horrible (and futile) adaptation without means to keep them safe during incubation.

[Nasik]

If you put it that way, I'm hardpressed to agree with you. Eggs can't have developed prior to some sort of social structure, or at least some clever use of the environment as protection from predators. Eggs are completely vulnerable and I think they'd be a horrible (and futile) adaptation without means to keep them safe during incubation.

Huh? I don't get it. Seems to me we agree on this. What the heck am I missing? I say the chicken came first (metaphorically speaking) -I just go back in time to the first cell - that cell didn't reproduce sexually - it reproduce asexually (ie. like bacteria) - Sexual reproduction is a step up the evolutionary ladder - where genetic information could have been swapped. So, therefore, first came the metaphorical "chicken' before any metaphorical "egg."

[cmar1965]

Hi Cart,

you wrote:
Ah, but is that a change in species?


That doesn't quite show a "non-chicken into a chicken" relationship.

(of course, species are also arbitraily defined, but it is the definition we're working with, I had thought...)

With the example I gave, no it is not a change in species, but in the case of non chicken to chicken it would not have to be either. That first CHICKEN could well have been a result of mutation of just a different type of fowl, which would mean the egg came before that first chicken cracked its way out of it!

[HorrorReporter]

Some other animal before the chicken of course, which then created the egg.. So neither the chicken NOR the egg

What i want to know... how did the tree grow?