Theos-Talk Archives (June 2002 Message tt00103)

At 09:16 PM 6/17/02 -0700, you wrote:
> further, current theory suggests birds evolved from
> reptiles. Reptiles layed eggs so the egg must have
> come first.
Mic:

Which came first: the reptile or the reptile egg?
Neither. Before the two was some earlier form of
creature that had some other method of reproduction.

A more general question is: which came first, the
parent or the offspring? The answer is that neither
came first. Both parent and offspring are different
points on the same circle of life.

The question is like asking: when looking at the
360 degrees of a circle, which came first, degree 0
or degree 180? The answer: neither. When the circle
came into being, all points came at the same time,
even though we might watch over time a point race
along the circumference of the circle.

Basically, it's a trick question. No part of
an integral cycle "comes first" in the sense of
bringing about the cycle. Neither a chicken
brought about the chicken/egg cycle nor an egg.
The whole cycle arose out of something else, a
different type of cycle.

When the chicken/egg cycle first arose, it's
completely arbitrary which point it started with.
That arbitrary starting point did not originate
the new cycle. It only represented the first
appearance of the cycle.

-- Eldon