this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] srecko@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] InternetPerson@lemmings.world 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Religion is usually bad, so I don't have an issue lumping them all together.

[–] tegs_terry@feddit.uk 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

C'mon man Sikhs are fucking chilled out

[–] InternetPerson@lemmings.world 1 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] jaagruk@mander.xyz 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

And why she was assassinated? It was her fault.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] 01101000_01101001@mander.xyz 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is by far the most correct answer to the chicken and egg question.

[–] Jako301@feddit.de 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not-quite-a-chicken laid an egg containing a definitely-chicken. Actual chicken egg was first.

[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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)

[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago

Haha cool blue, very nice!