We’ve heard of the common chicken and egg paradox and we often use this term too, however, let me tell you today why I think that it is actually quite dumb to say that. This paradox is only true only because it is looked at at a microscopic and shallow view. You can only imagine how this paradox was coined; person observes chicken lays egg and chicks hatching from eggs, then got confused.
However, if you pull back much, much further back in time, we can see that the paradox is clearly non-existent. Here are 2 theories to prove:
For people who believe in a God, the explanation is simple as a friend of mine have once mentioned before in this blog (junior in “CHICKEN!!!”) that of course chickens came first because God created them.
For people who are strictly convinced by science, there’s the ever renowned, theory of evolution. I don’t really know how to phrase it properly but, evolution is said to be a process whereby an organism change its physical / chemical components of its body to adapt to its surrounding environment. And so, let’s do a small case study on chickens shall we? Beginning with Micro Organisms from the sea:
Micro Organism > tadpole looking creature > more sophisticated swimming beings > land crawlers > flying wannabe’s > flying creature > chicken
Clearly, that is not accurate at all, but my point is that evolution didn’t involve the change of micro organism directly to eggs. Evolution involves only when the creature is developing or matured not when the creature is within the egg. Therefore, there is no direct relationship between a simple living thing to evolve to an egg then to a chicken. Evolution believers, believe that.
Any disageements?
God created animals and birds…Hence I believe chicken comes first before eggs..:)
Simple……No disagreements there. If eggs were first, the first human person would have the first fried egg in the world and we’ll never hear of KFC ever again muahahhahaha. I wonder if they’ll have a KFB (Kentucky Fried Beef)instead?
Jonathan, fried beef doesn’t taste good friend. Beef is only meant to be eaten rare or medium rare. haha
I’ve answered this one to my own satisfaction myself and was curious to see your answer. I fully follow and agree with the first part, if creationism is true then the chicken came first.
I happen to belong to the second group, the strict evolutionists. The problem is, I read your last paragraph a couple times and I still don’t know what you’re claiming the evolutionist should believe.
This part
“Evolution involves only when the creature is developing or matured not when the creature is within the egg.”
seems to imply that the evolution to a chicken only applies to when the creature is already in it’s young to mature stages of independent life, in which case, the chicken came first.
Then there’s this part
“Therefore, there is no direct relationship between a simple living thing to evolve to an egg then to a chicken.”
which seems more ambiguous.
I’m not really criticizing your writing style so much as I’m just asking “What? I don’t understand.”
Here’s how I understand it. In a creationist’s view, the chicken came first. In the evolutionist’s view, the one I share, the egg came first. This is because over time small genetic mutations happen at the genetic level when DNA is being formed in a new zygote. These mutations cause slight changes in the organism which can either help or harm it’s overall survival rates and therefore it’s ability to make as many new offspring as possible. Thus spreading these new genetic traits to more new creatures. Eventually the change is so great that the set of creatures descended from that line are different enough from the original and from other lines of descent that they are different species. These changes are so small between one generation and it’s direct ancestry that it is almost impossible for us to detect which new offspring is the official “First Chicken.” This is in much the same way that depositing one penny into somebody’s bank account doesn’t make them rich but enough pennies can make a fortune so where is that line where somebody was once “not rich” and now with the addition of this one penny is all of a sudden “rich”
Regardless of how minute the change is there had to have been a creature who by all accounts was the first creature that we would classify as a Chicken and since those mutations happen at the earliest of developmental stages, in utero, that creature is a chicken before it ever hatches from it’s egg. Therefore, the egg came first.
Waddya think?
Hey Lucas, thanks for responding to this post. Indeed my style of writing is rather confusing, so please do criticize it so that i can be better. I know that a lot of people these days belong to the second group therefore i write about the evolutionary approach.
If i’m getting you right, your stand is that the egg comes first before the chicken because of the minute changes (mutations) that is being formed in the new zygote. Is that right? I also understand your point in the last paragraph about “that creature is a chicken before it ever hatches from it’s egg”… and i guess it is just where you pin point the starting generation of the official chicken we know today.
From your first point, what i can say is that, although the minute changes are being encoded into the DNA of a zygote, these minute changes occurred first in the generation that bore these zygotes – in other words, the developed adults – then it was passed down to the next generation. so, to put some sequence into it:
Generation #1 – physical changes appear to adapt to natural surroundings. DNA encodes the development and replication of these changes.
Generation #2 – while in egg, DNA codes from Generation #1 is being formed in zygote. when hatched, it will look and behave like Generation #1.
~ there was a natural disaster and suddenly resource and space becomes scarce.
Generation #2 – becomes more aggressive thus producing more testosterone. the high level testosterone production information is encoded into Generation #2’s DNA.
Generation #3 – while in egg, DNA encodes both characteristics of Generation #1 and #2 and when hatched, look and behave more like Generation #2.
Therefore, from this flow, it is observable that it was the developing or matured adults that mutated first, then the mutations are passed down to the later descendants.
As to your second statement on where the first chicken we know came about… hmm.. that i guess with so little minute changes at a time, it is really difficult to make a distinction on “when” the first chicken unless it is a beginning of a new species, which could only be found out during the later mating stages.
I hope i wrote it more clearly this time. oh yea, try reading this and see if you understand it.. haha.