this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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The chicken vs egg question has never been about chronology or science.
It’s been about religion vs science.
Science says the egg came first: something nearly imperceptibly not quite a chicken laid an egg that hatched a chicken. That’s how evolution works, with the egg coming first.
Religion says a god poofed a chicken into existence. The chicken came first, and only ever laid pure chicken eggs. The eggs will forever hatch a chicken and nothing but a chicken.
That’s the chicken vs egg thing. It’s not a puzzle at all, it’s just science vs religion.
e: simplified. I’m too wordy by default.
You can interpret it that way now but that's not the original meanig.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_or_the_egg
I understand and respect where you are coming from but i prefer not to rewrite history while arguing about ideas.
Yes, thank you, you're exactly right. The person you're responding to is correct that it's come to have science vs religion overtones, but that's not what the expression meant to people for ages and ages.
I guess the overtones are a product of their times. Currently, it seems to be: is science/religion the "cause" or "effect".
I always staked claim that it was a "scientific vs philosophical" question; but I never considered how timeline could change the overtones or underlying thinking of "The chicken and the egg" concept. Neat
You’re right, I shouldn’t have said ‘never’. It was a paradox in ancient history, but at least in my lifetime, I’ve read it as basically solved. That may be a relatively recent stance (since 100-200 years ago), but it doesn’t seem useful to continue presenting it as a paradox at this point.
I've always interpreted it as which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?
But I'd just like to point out not all religions have that view of creationism vs evolution, and even within Christianity it's really only your super conservative, and very loud, fundamentalists. Catholicism doesn't have an official stance on evolution, iirc, the Episcopal church in the USA is fully supportive of evolution, as are most mainline Christians. Not to detract from your point or anything, I just don't like seeing all religious people, or all Christians, lumped together with some of the worst examples of religiosity that the US has to offer.
I agree. And this boils down to how you define 'chicken egg'. If the definition is "egg laid by a chicken", then the chicken had to have come first. If it's "egg that hatches a chick" (which will grow into a chicken), then the egg must have come first. But this ignores the pretty huge problem of picking a precise point on the evolutionary timeline where a non-chicken gave birth to a chicken. There isn't going to be such a clearly-defined point.
Yeah, but it's at least an interesting pointless unsolvable conundrum, whereas the other interpretations aren't even interesting. Lol.
Religion is usually bad, so I don't have an issue lumping them all together.
Jesus is the Ted McGinley of family gatherings.
C'mon man Sikhs are fucking chilled out
Compared to other religions, I understand that take, if we neglect stuff like not living up to their own doctrine of, e.g., equal rights between women and men, or the Khalistan movement, which has caused death and abused human rights on several occasions, also by killing civilians.
Still, as most organized religions, it became emergent as a tool of mass control and subjugation. Moral behaviour is not formed by critical thought and self-reflection, but by devotion to some mysterious higher power. Which is and always has been a core issue of problematic behaviour we can so often observe today with religious people. A side-effect is that it has the danger of hindering progress and societal evolution by having a creationism as one of it's core teachings, as far as I know.
A further form of subjugation, hindering freedom of individual human (and harmless) expression, can be found among the Kakkars. For example the "dress-code" with having uncut hair, cotton undergarments etc..
I could go on. So to make it short, no, religions are usually detrimental for the long term constructive development of humanity and Sikhism is no exception.
A lot of what you say can be applied to other, non-religious cultures, not least that of the west, albeit in different measure. Any society will develop an overarching system of rules and standards; it's necessary to avoid anarchy, which is more inimical to the broader progress of mankind. People naturally band together, it's an evolutionary trait, so regardless of what intangible strictures those tribes are subject to, there will always be friction between and indeed amongst them. Voltaire said "If God did not exist it would be necessary to create him." and he was dead right, he just didn't mean 'God' in the strictly theistic sense.
Ultimately, people are people, meaning they need reeling in or things go to shit. Perhaps there exists an ideal set of circumstances under which civilised man can live peacefully without noticeably impinging on his moral objectivity, but let's not hold our breath. As long as there are groups, there will be some cunts who tighten the shackles for everyone, whether it be by breaking the rules, or making the rules.
So yes, all religions are bad, but in the spirit of catching all, I'd go broader.
Not necessarily... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Indira_Gandhi
Whats a little light assassination between friends?!
And why she was assassinated? It was her fault.
I'm not sure why you think that's relevant.
This has vibes of "and why was she raped? it was her fault."
To be fair though I haven't even clicked the link and I know nothing about this. For all I know, maybe this person was literally Hitler and assassination was the only way to stop them. But even then, we can conclusively say that this was not chill.
Nope realy poor analogy. Ya she was Indian Hitler.
If a Jew had killed Hitler would u have called it Judaism's fault.
No, but I wouldn't say anything about this was chill
literally no one in the world means that when they talk about chicken vs egg. what a weird way to look at the world.
also citation needed on religion saying god proofed chicken into existence without the egg.
It made Fox News in 2015.
A biology paper that same year.
Religious people seem to care.
More religious people care.
Biologists have been talking about it.
BBC Science covered it.
I didn’t pull this out of my arse.
And re: that citation you asked for:
—Answers In Genesis
first of all kudos on the citations; thank you for your effort.
I don't think these prove that the question is about religion vs science. the question is philosophical, and the fact that some religious people have a take on it that doesn't agree with what would be the scientific/technical answer doesn't make it about religion vs science.
if a tree falls and no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? that would also have a scientific answer, and depending on the religion, you may have a religious argument that disagrees with the scientific answer. the question would remain a philosophical one, and not one of science vs religion.
I wasn’t trying to prove the question is about religion vs science; I was responding to the previous comment that said:
My links show lots of people in the world say that. Not everyone, but enough that it does come up sometimes.
There are multiple facets and perspectives in every philosophical question.
I think there are two valid scientific/philosophical answers without taking religion into it, based on one question:
Are we specifically talking a chicken egg, or the concept of an egg?
In the former case, eggshells contain compounds that cannot exist in nature, and must come from a creature. a chicken egg cannot exist without a chicken before it, thus the chicken came first.
In the latter case, various evolutionary splits happened between animals evolving egg developing capability and some animals evolving into chickens. From this we can say that the egg came before the chicken.
Worst case, this solved exactly nothing. Best case, it can be an exercise in reasoning.
This is by far the most correct answer to the chicken and egg question.
Not really, it still doesn't answer the question as the main thing is still unclear.
Is the first chicken egg the one the chicken hatched from or the first egg a chicken laid.
Both can be argued as correct.
Not-quite-a-chicken laid an egg containing a definitely-chicken. Actual chicken egg was first.
We are so zoomed in evolution at this point that the arbitrary distinction between what is a chicken and what not doesn't make any sense anymore. Evolution does some jumps, but it is still hard to actually draw the line where a nearly-chicken has not been a chicken yet. Maybe someone could fill in my mental gap in here for me, but hasn't Richard Dawkins given the example of some animal (possibly a rabbit?) that is traced back in evolution and since you cannot draw the line when it hasn't been that animal it is rabbits all the way down?
Yeah, the fossil record and dna analysis is such a gradient, any lines we draw are arbitrary. To be fair, those lines were always for our own convenience, in much the same way it’s useful for print designers to specify Pantone 032, but if most people look at the full colour chart they couldn’t even tell you where ‘red’ becomes ‘orange’.
It’s definitely rabbits (or turtles) all the way down.
We’re prokaryotes, and vertebrates, and mammals, and from there some people get bent. Are we apes? Genus homo? Where must we draw the line to ensure we’re not actually animals like other living things and were divinely inspired special creations?
I like simplicity. Life is a beautiful prismatic projection and it doesn’t matter that much what our Pantone swatch turns out to be.
(Sorry, /mini rant)
Well, I actually completely agree with you and thought your initial comment to be quite interesting. I've never viewed this thought experiment as to be science vs religion.
My point in my previous comment was exactly that, all our lines and categories are arbitrary. They're really useful to us, but in the end still arbitrary. I enjoy categorizing stuff and so I like taxonomy a lot. But I always have to keep in mind that the categories I choose are ultimately human made and can never represent the full spectrum of nature.
Pantone 032 feels to aggressive to me, can I have another color? :P
I like 14-4317 TCX. 😎👌
Haha cool blue, very nice!
What came first? Chicken or egg?
It doesn’t say if the question is about “chicken egg” but only egg
Otherwise the question would be:
What came first? Chicken or chicken egg?