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As an elementary school student [0], I struggled with the incompatibilities of evolution and the literal Christian creationist model I was taught. I thought tha

As an elementary school student [0], I struggled with the incompatibilities of evolution and the literal Christian creationist model I was taught. I thought that "the chicken and the egg" was a question of faith. One who believes that the Earth was created in seven days believes that the chicken came first, in whole form, on Day Five. One who uses evolution and natural selection as a model thinks it most likely that the first animal that could be identified as a chicken grew from an egg that was a mutation from non-chicken parents. 0: https://enki.org/2018/07/30/things-i-learned-in-elementary-school/ https://enki.org/2018/07/30/things-i-learned-in-elementary-s...

Psyladine 7y ago
>I struggled with the incompatibilities of evolution and the literal Christian creationist model I was taught. I had the opposite problem, with parochial school teachers well versed in shifting back and forth between "it was a metaphor" when evidence contradicted it, to biblical literalism when there wasn't clear contrary evidence. So it was right when right, and meant to show us what is right when it was false. I thought C&E was a philosophical question, like the ship of Theseus, it can't have a reductive answer because it represents ideals rather than logic. To be devil's advocate for your stance, the '... an egg that was a mutation from non-chicken parents' were themselves derived first from an egg, which could be said to be the origin of the chicken, but itself laid by antecedent.... So eventually it must go back to the first entity that laid the first egg, and whenceforth they, etc...hence a philosophical perspective.
- LiquidSky 7y ago
  >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.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    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.
    - LiquidSky 7y ago
      That's a good point. So either way, we have a definite solution. Huzzah!
    - UncleOxidant 7y ago
      But in that model if the egg had come first then God would have incubated it, right?
      - mannykannot 7y ago
        The creationist position is that if it is not in scripture, it didn't happen.
        JoeAltmaier 7y ago
        So, my bad date last Wednesday didn't happen?! Huzzah!
    - rafaelvasco 7y ago
      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.
Cpoll 7y ago
> mutation from non-chicken parents Only tangentially related, but that invokes the Sorites paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox If you follow the thought exercise further, there's other considerations: The first chicken may not have had any other chickens to mate with.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  The protochickens and chickens would at that point be so similar that a protochicken and chicken mating would probably have half of their offspring be chickens. At that point you're talking about one single DNA base difference, or something like that. If you were to watch it happen, it would be a very gradual gradient, and the only way to differentiate chicken from protochicken would be to match them up against an arbitrary list of qualities.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Yeah, ”species” is a vague concept and so biologists fight an endless war over where the limit goes from case to case, perhaps ocasionally cursing Linnaeus for coming up with the idea of a single ordering in the first place.
  - contingo 7y ago
    There are many co-existing species concepts used in practice that are statistically rigorously defined, selected according to the biology of the lineage in question (e.g. it makes little sense to apply the same concept to both recombining and asexual lineages). It's an intensively researched area that becomes more refined and more explanatory with time, like any other area of science. Delving into the recent literature might enable you to make a less clumsy critique. Independently evolving units of biological diversity exist. Any accurate knowledge about them, and about all the edge cases and fuzzinesses and genetic phenomena that make systematization complicated, comes from biology itself.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  If you took a chicken today, and looked at every single one if its direct ancestors down its lineage for the past billion generations, any single ancestor would probably be indistinguishable from their own parents, yet the last ancestor would look nothing like the chicken. It's because the incremental change with each generation is absolutely tiny, but those changes are magnified as they accumulate over countless generations.

Psyladine 7y ago

>I struggled with the incompatibilities of evolution and the literal Christian creationist model I was taught. I had the opposite problem, with parochial school teachers well versed in shifting back and forth between "it was a metaphor" when evidence contradicted it, to biblical literalism when there wasn't clear contrary evidence. So it was right when right, and meant to show us what is right when it was false. I thought C&E was a philosophical question, like the ship of Theseus, it can't have a reductive answer because it represents ideals rather than logic. To be devil's advocate for your stance, the '... an egg that was a mutation from non-chicken parents' were themselves derived first from an egg, which could be said to be the origin of the chicken, but itself laid by antecedent.... So eventually it must go back to the first entity that laid the first egg, and whenceforth they, etc...hence a philosophical perspective.

LiquidSky 7y ago
>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.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  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.
  - LiquidSky 7y ago
    That's a good point. So either way, we have a definite solution. Huzzah!
  - UncleOxidant 7y ago
    But in that model if the egg had come first then God would have incubated it, right?
    - mannykannot 7y ago
      The creationist position is that if it is not in scripture, it didn't happen.
      - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
        So, my bad date last Wednesday didn't happen?! Huzzah!
  - rafaelvasco 7y ago
    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.

Cpoll 7y ago

> mutation from non-chicken parents Only tangentially related, but that invokes the Sorites paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox If you follow the thought exercise further, there's other considerations: The first chicken may not have had any other chickens to mate with.

whatshisface 7y ago
The protochickens and chickens would at that point be so similar that a protochicken and chicken mating would probably have half of their offspring be chickens. At that point you're talking about one single DNA base difference, or something like that. If you were to watch it happen, it would be a very gradual gradient, and the only way to differentiate chicken from protochicken would be to match them up against an arbitrary list of qualities.
SiempreViernes 7y ago
Yeah, ”species” is a vague concept and so biologists fight an endless war over where the limit goes from case to case, perhaps ocasionally cursing Linnaeus for coming up with the idea of a single ordering in the first place.
- contingo 7y ago
  There are many co-existing species concepts used in practice that are statistically rigorously defined, selected according to the biology of the lineage in question (e.g. it makes little sense to apply the same concept to both recombining and asexual lineages). It's an intensively researched area that becomes more refined and more explanatory with time, like any other area of science. Delving into the recent literature might enable you to make a less clumsy critique. Independently evolving units of biological diversity exist. Any accurate knowledge about them, and about all the edge cases and fuzzinesses and genetic phenomena that make systematization complicated, comes from biology itself.
nkrisc 7y ago
If you took a chicken today, and looked at every single one if its direct ancestors down its lineage for the past billion generations, any single ancestor would probably be indistinguishable from their own parents, yet the last ancestor would look nothing like the chicken. It's because the incremental change with each generation is absolutely tiny, but those changes are magnified as they accumulate over countless generations.