Which came first???

[LeslieDean]

I am sure everyone has heard the saying "which came first the chicken or the egg?" I asked my husband this one day and his reply left me stunned. He said "Leslie I am surprised you do not know the answer to that since you a a witness". I quickly started thinking he had read something in the Awake or Watchtower that I missed and he found the answer but to my surprise he said "The chicken came first. Jehovah would not have had an egg hatch and not have its mother there to take care of it." Adam was not created as an infant with no one there to take care of him he reasoned. Now I know the answer. It seems perfectly logical now. What do you think?

[leannsmarie]

In this case we are making the assumption that by the term 'egg' we are referring to a chicken egg. Is this assumption necessary? Are chicken eggs the only kind of egg there is?

Genesis 1:20-21

. . .And God went on to say: “Let the waters swarm forth a swarm of living souls and let flying creatures fly over the earth upon the face of the expanse of the heavens.” 21 And God proceeded to create the great sea monsters and every living soul that moves about, which the waters swarmed forth according to their kinds, and every winged flying creature according to its kind. . . .

I figure if the sea creatures were created before land creatures (since that is the order they are presented in these verses) then there were likely eggs of sea creatures before there ever was a chicken! (Also by the term 'came' we are further assuming 'created', but really the two words are not interchangeable.)

If that is the case then the egg came first. It just wasn't a chicken egg.

Just a thought.....

[Musky]

Interesting analogy, but doesn't common sense tell us that the old adage "What came first the chicken or the egg" is referring to the chicken egg? So of course, Leslie's husband would be correct, Jehovah created the chicken first, since if he had just created eggs, who would have sat on them? LOL

[leannsmarie]

Common sense might tell us this if we were talking about something sensible.

Since this is a riddle, and riddles rely on assumptions to make answers unclear, I just thought it might be a good idea to remove the assumption that the riddle is based on.

A statement I found about this is interesting:

Cultural references to the chicken and egg intend to point out the futility of identifying the first case of a circular cause and consequence. It could be considered that in this approach lies the most fundamental nature of the question. A literal answer is somewhat obvious, as egg-laying species pre-date the existence of chickens.

Also:

A literal historic account of Genesis would place the chicken before the egg.

And again:

Definition of the chicken egg

An overlooked method of approaching the question is to base the answer from the definition of the chicken egg. Is the chicken egg an egg that was directly laid by a chicken, or an egg that resulted directly in the birth of a chicken (chick)? Consequently by definition, according to the former, the chicken came first. If however, the definition was based on the latter, then the chicken egg came first.[18] However, it would seem that this method attempts to answer a slightly different question than the one posed by philosophers, as the former attempts to determine whether a certain egg came before or after a chicken, while the latter attempts to determine whether eggs universally came before chickens, or vice versa.

Reference to -->> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_or_the_egg

[Musky]

You have way too much time on your hands!

[loginphp]

You have way too much time on your hands!

[GrumpysWife]

You have way too much time on your hands!

[Áine]

Interesting analogy, but doesn't common sense tell us that the old adage "What came first the chicken or the egg" is referring to the chicken egg? So of course, Leslie's husband would be correct, Jehovah created the chicken first, since if he had just created eggs, who would have sat on them? LOL

Yep and who would have laid them or fertilised them ???