The perplexing question that has puzzled people for hundreds of years:
October is "National Chicken Month." Does that come before or after "National Egg Month" ?

What came first? The Chicken or the Egg?
This tongue-in-cheek document is not meant to offend. It is intended for your amusement.
Please remember, "Laughter is the oil of life's complicated machinery" (Iain, 1998).
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Here's what I would like you to do, my young inquisitor:

1. Please go to your school library and find a good dictionary.
   (I recommend "Webster's Third New International Dictionary" because I love words.)
2. Look up Chicken. In "Webster's Third", it is on page 387.
3. Look up Egg. I found it on page 726 in my copy of "Webster's".

Now, before I continue with the rest of my explanation, I would like you to think about your question, and base your answer on what you found in your dictionary:

What came first? The chicken or the egg?

Oh, you're done thinking already. Okay. You say you want my answer? I feel so proud that you'd ask me, one of the biggest experts on words, for my answer.

Well, since I found "chicken" on page 387, and I found "egg" on page 726, and since 387 comes before 726, I have to say, without a moment of doubt, that "the chicken" comes before "the egg". Does your dictionary tell you the same thing? (return to top)

Pope John 23 and his answer
(translated from the Latin)

Ah, another visitor. I enjoyeth it when young students asketh me questions. Would you please doeth something for me?

1. Getteth out your Holy Bible. I don't mindeth if you useth one of the newer English translations. They all cameth from the same original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic manuscripts and scrolls.
2. Findeth Genesis and readeth the first chapter of Genesis, right in the front of the Bible.
3. In particular, let's readeth starting at the twentieth verse:
   And God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven." And God created Great Whales and every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth." And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
4. The Bible telleth us "God created every winged fowl". We can safely sayeth that the Bible sayeth that God created chickens. It does not sayeth that God madeth eggs first.
5. The Bible also telleth us that God telleth them to "be fruitful and multiply". This means that he toldeth them to layeth eggs and haveth baby chickens.
6. Thus, we can concludeth that the Bible telleth us that the chicken cometh before the egg. (return to top)

Charles Darwin's answer

Hello, budding young scientist. I'm glad you decided to talk to me also. So many people ignore my opinions. Before I answer your question, let me tell you a little bit about Evolution. The Theory of Evolution states that various animals and plants evolved from ancestors that were not that exact animal or plant. Successive generations gained differences and eventually, a less-developed animal or plant evolved into the more-developed organism. In other words, evolution means that life might have started out with very small animals called amoebas, then grown bigger and bigger, and more and more complex, from eon to eon, and from generation to generation, starting out in the oceans and the primordial soup, then eventually, life evolved into the land animals.

Let's look at a set of assumptions that follow a somewhat logical set of arguments. This set of assumptions will lead us to what, I believe, is the correct answer. This may get a bit complicated, so feel free to discuss this with your parent, teacher, or another friend.

First assumption: For the sake of argument, lets assume that evolution is a scientific fact. Most science teachers agree with this statement. Some ministers, rabbis, priests and orthodox believers disagree. (But since Pope John Paul 2 has stated that God may have used evolution as part of His creation, maybe more ministers and priests will start to agree.)

Second assumption: If we go back many thousands of years, we will find an ancestor of the chicken that was not a chicken. (For example, many people believe that one ancestor of the human beings might have been a greatly-developed relative of the chimpanzee.)

Third assumption: This "not-chicken" ancestor was probably the ancestor of more than one of the current sets of animals that lay eggs, so we can assume that this "not-chicken" ancestor laid eggs. Perhaps this "not-chicken" animal was also a great-great-ancestor of the duck, the chicken and a few other animals that laid eggs. For lack of a better name, let's call this ancestor a KcudneKcihc.

Fourth Assumption: Life goes on. Generation after Generation, these creatures keep getting closer and closer to what we now call a chicken, but we don't know when one creature changed from being a "KcudneKcihc" to a "Chicken".

The <www.MAZES.com> proof: Let's make a timeline that shows the period of time a few years before the first chicken, when the great-great-great-grandfather of the first chicken was still known as a "KcudneKcihc."

great-great-great-grandmother KcudneKcihc
Egg
great-great-grandmother KcudneKcihc
Egg
great-grandmother KcudneKcihc
Egg
grandmother KcudneKcihc
Egg
mother KcudneKcihc
Egg
first Chicken
Egg
another Chicken
Egg
Etcetera

So, as you can see, at some point in the deep past, we had an animal that was definitely NOT a chicken that laid an egg. In the more recent past, we had a chicken that was hatched out of an egg. We don't know when, but at some point, we had a mother, that was not a chicken, that laid an egg, from which a chicken hatched.

So, what came first? The chicken or the egg.

We can't point to when it happened, but, if chickens evolved from another earlier animal, then at some point in the past, an animal that wasn't a chicken laid an egg, and out of that egg, we got a chicken. So, the egg came first. (return to top)

My Answer

For the record, yes, I do believe in God, and I believe that he created the world. But I also believe that God used evolution as part of his creation. This belief is held by a number of theologians, including my late father, who was a Lutheran minister.

I read recently that Roman Catholic Pope John Paul 2 released an encyclical acknowledging that God might have used evolution as part of his creation process. This also appears to be covered by the verses that Pope John 23 quoteth above, where it says, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature ..." The evolutionists do believe that life evolved FIRST in the ocean, and then slowly developed into the land creatures that we have today, and the Bible sort of says that the moving creatures did come from the water.

So, based on both the Bible and based on the Theory of Evolution, I believe that the egg came before the chicken.

If we call today's chicken an example of an animal that is 100% a chicken, then at some point in the past, we had an animal that was 49.999% a chicken, that laid an egg, that hatched an animal that was maybe 50.035% a chicken. But every egg was 100% an egg, I'd guess.

Copyright 1998 by John (at) Mazes.com, modified 1999.
Master copy archived at < http://www.mazes.com/ChickenOrEgg.html>.

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