Which Came First the Chicken or the Egg?

I've often wondered why this particular question has been billed as the one to, 'Stump mankind throughout the ages.' The answer, as I see it, is more than just a little obvious.

I don't claim to be an expert on fowls of any kind, but if you were to ask a poultry farmer just how long an egg could survive without some form of incubation, I have no doubt as to what the answer would be... and it certainly wouldn't be long enough for it to hatch. So how could an egg pre-date it's natural incubator, the chicken?

Another fact that supports 'the chicken had to come first', is that a baby chick is helpless when it first emerges from it's shell. It needs to be taught to 'scratch' for food by it's parent(s). It would also pop out to find itself, virtually, defenseless against preditors. (If you don't think a mother hen protects her chicks just try getting close to a hatchling some time! You'll soon found out where the old expression, 'She protects those kids like an old mother hen!' came from.)

From a Biblical stand point the chicken comming first is substanciated, as well, by the fact that God didn't say He created eggs, or seeds, or any other immature form of life. He specifically said, in Genisis 1:11 "...Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, after its kind..." Notice that God said yielding rather than will yield and He said whose seed is, rather than will be, in itself. Later, in Genisis 1:22, God blesses the animals He's just created and tells them to '... be frutiful and multiply...' How could they have done this if they hadn't been created as mature beings? With the noted exceptions of things such as cockroaches and crab grass, (which actually seem to thrive on our concerted attempts to rid ourselves of them!), living things are extremely vulnerable throughout both their infantile and pubescent stages of development. So how, then, could they have survived long enough to '...be fruitful and multiply...' as God had just instructed them to do?

The answer to the question of 'which came first', then, should be obvious. Anyone who has any doubts as to which it was has made a conscience choice to complicate one of the most simplistic facts of all times and should not, in my opinion, be trusted with any sharp objects!

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