Which came first?

[Alycia_V]

There is the age old question which came first the chicken or the egg? I was just wondering if I sould insane as I believe it stands for which is it god or evolution. I mean think about it...if you pick the chicken it would be that you belived in god as the chicken just appeared out of no where and if you picked the egg it would be evolution because the egg has to evolve into a chicken What do you think?

[deso]

I think both arrived at the same time in the supermarket.

[CrazyWolfman]

Possibly, but personally I tend to think it reasonable enough to believe that God and science can both fit in perfectly well with each other. Although I'm still making my mind up regarding God and co. I don't see what's wrong, at least from a theoretical perspective, with God using evolution as a tool for creation. On a somewhat different note the answer is the egg, considering reptiles were laying them long before the chicken ever arrived.

[yassa]

The cockerel came first, he always does..........

[jake-the-peg]

The facile answer is the egg because dinosaurs laid them long before chickens were about!

So ignoring that look at the most primative organisms - things like amoeba.

These are single cells, they reproduce by splitting in two, they don't lay eggs. Eggs were a later development.

So organisms came to exist before eggs.

[gary baldy]

I suppose the extentialism approach would be say the chicken because the chicken is a definite whilst the egg is a probable.

[Senga 2]

But if no one is listening does the chicken still cluck?

[jno]

eggs have always been eggs (well, not since amoeba days of course) but chickens at some stage weren't what we'd call chickens... if you believe in evolution; so I think your analysis is right, Alycia.

[scuzzball]

Eggs don't evolve into chickens, they grow into chickens. There is a very,very big difference between the two processes.

[chakka35]

Obviously it means 'chicken's egg' otherwise there would be no point in the question as a riddle. In which case the answer is 'the chicken' . My reasoning is:
In the course of evolution a pre-chicken lays an egg which contains that final random mutation, the last of a series, which ensures that the outcome of that egg will not be able to mate with the parent species. So it will, by defintion, be a new species which we call 'chicken' . It then produces the first chicken's egg. So the sequence is:
Pre-chicken- pre-chicken's egg- chicken- chickens egg.

[indie1978]

is it not obvios that they arrived at the same time! both a by product of two diffrent speacies interbreeding .

[Tim123]

It is at the point of fertilisation that genetic mutation occurs, not at the point of hatching.

So, the first ever chicken hatched from the first ever chicken egg, which was laid by a pre-chicken.

The egg came first.

[hal]

indie1978 - species, by definition, can't interbreed.

[Alycia_V]

How did we got to interbreeding?

[Scylax]

A chicken is an egg's method of reproducing itself.

[denzil45]

But if the chicken mutated over the evolutional time scale as it did in the past then it couldnt be called a chicken. So the chicken and egg theory would be scrambled.