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Comment by LiquidSky | Hacker News Reader

>an egg that was a mutation from non-chicken parents' were themselves derived first from an egg

But that's irrelevant. The argument isn't about where eggs come from, and simply laying eggs doesn't make something a chicken.

If we define "chicken" as the biological creatures we know today that has a certain genetic makeup, then at some point in their evolutionary history there would be the first such creature that has this makeup being hatched from eggs made by creatures that don't. Just as, at some point in the past, there was the first genetic modern human born from pre-human parents.

Hence, the egg must have come first. This is only an unsolvable problem if you hold that there have always been chickens that never evolved from earlier creatures, i.e. the Creationist model.

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No, the Creationist model would have Chickens born whole. Shazam - there's a chicken! It would have come first. If an egg had come first in that model, it would have died from not being incubated.

That's a good point. So either way, we have a definite solution. Huzzah!

But in that model if the egg had come first then God would have incubated it, right?

The creationist position is that if it is not in scripture, it didn't happen.

So, my bad date last Wednesday didn't happen?! Huzzah!

I believe in both Creationism and Evolutionism, but in a modified way: For each entity there was a proto entity that was created by some process. Like you have some primordial elements that are intelligently organized in a way that creates life. Then, this first entity, evolved , during billions of years, following certain laws created by this Creator, to the form we have today. In sum, I don't believe everything came from Chaos by chance. There must be a sentient force, with a consciousness far beyond what we can conceive, that manipulated this Chaos , primordial elements and created everything from it. Chaos, by it's very nature cannot create order from itself. This is the only explanation that makes sense to me. To me we all got pieces of the truth. One day we'll merge it all and understand everything.

That's not Creationism though. Creationism really is, there is no evolution and everything was created as is. You can have a Creator but not have Creationism- that's basically what I was taught when raised as a Christian (Genesis is at least to some degree metaphorical or a remnant of an older faith, God was essentially the First Mover, we shouldn't disbelieve science, etc.).

What you describe is more like Deism or Theism, where you believe in some sort of higher order intelligence behind the universe, but it's not incompatible with science and rationality and observation. You can't believe in both Creationism and evolution because Creationism is an explicit denial of evolution, and of anything but a literal reading of Genesis. But you're in good company, as you just described many/most of America's Founding Fathers, who today's Evangelicals would have lynched as heretics if they bothered to read their actual words rather than treat them as cartoon mascots for whatever they want to imagine America stands for at the moment.

Some Creationists believe in microevolution though, such as myself. I totally believe that different subspecies (or even species) have developed since the point I believe God created them, since the difference between species and subspecies can sometimes be blurry. E.G. different dog breeds can look so different from each other, yet can crossbreed without much issue. Cockatiels and cockatoos have even been shown to have crossbreeding potential, producing fascinatingly beautiful hybrids, even though they're technically different species. What I'm saying is that I'm a Christian Biblical Creationist that sees microevolution and natural selection as a feature, not a bug. It allows species to naturally adapt to different environments, or changes within the same environment.

If you believe in microevolution, what do you think happens if "microevolution" continues for millenia?

And why do all the creatures (you claim were created out of thin air) as if they had common ancestors? Both physiologically as well as genetically?

To quote Dobzhansky: Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne might help you resolving that last part of the puzzle.

Yeah makes total sense. I think in the end people mostly misinterpreted the Genesis part in the Bible, and most of it for that matter.

My vision is one I grew after reading several texts of several sources and reflecting about them, not only traditional religious texts but more esoteric and occult texts about it. It's very interesting to see that they mostly complement one another. If you get an esoteric hermetic text or something about how creation occurred you see that it doesn't negate the Bible, and it doesn't negate Science at all. It just goes deeper and deeper, mostly using symbolism.

Like the ship of theseus though, at what point does it stop being a chicken, i.e. its parent. The progenitor is 'obviously' whatever preceded the chicken, but that's just it - is that itself the egg or the chicken-maker? There you are started down the tautological root back to what first first conceived both whatwouldbe-egg and whatwouldbe-chicken to come.

You're misusing the "Ship of Theseus" concept. That has to do with individual identity.

>at what point does it stop being a chicken, i.e. its parent.

When it doesn't meet the genetic definition of a chicken, however you choose to define that. Once you have a definition, there will be a point in evolutionary history where such a creature arises. Anything before that is not a chicken, so therefore

>is that itself the egg or the chicken-maker

Once again, the answer is "the egg". A pre-chicken creature produced an egg that hatched the first chicken. Problem neatly solved.

But what if ”chicken” is a singelton?

If that were so, everything about the issue would be different, but it is not so.

The semantic question is whether an egg is named for the creature that laid it or the creature it contains.

Pretty sure it’s named after the physical structure and not the ortifice that spawned it.

How do you figure? I'm pretty sure we still call it "chicken egg", "duck egg", etc. even if the egg isn't fertilised.

That was my reading as well, sort of like 'have your cake and eat it too' or one hand clapping. An infinite loop not meant for logical reduction as much as contemplation on the 'is' identity.

I thought I was on the right road with Theseus, but maybe not.

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