© 10 Colin Melbourne
A Classic Conundrum Solved
Q: What should Christians say when somebody asks them which came first; Chicken or egg? Does the Bible give any clues about this difficult question?
A: The phrase, “it’s a chicken and egg situation” is commonly used in English to denote a cyclical conundrum without end or beginning. The implication of the idiom is that you cannot have one without the other, ergo the question is unsolvable.
This is an old Pagan riddle, dressed up as an apparent paradox, it makes children giggle when they perceive the problem, and often arises when sharing the Good News with unbelievers, especially during discussion of origins.
In reality, there isn’t any paradox, and the Christian has no hesitation affirming what the Bible says about it.
Creation DVDs: The case against evolution has massive scientific proof that proponents choose to blindly ignore. Here are some excellent Creationist tools to help you convince sceptics.
The answer is spelled out plainly in Genesis Chapter 1:20-23 KJV; that on the fifth day of Creation God created, by His Word, every winged fowl, after its kind and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. Then He blessed them saying let fowl multiply in the Earth. Here it is in context…
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
What could be clearer?
That is the absolute truth, and there is no other.
You can stake your whole life on what Almighty God has written down for us, indeed we must, or stand ashamed at His return.
Here we have God’s testimony declaring that He created winged fowl first, not eggs; Eggs don’t have wings, nor do they fly.
Fowl do have wings, and I assure you, when they have to, even chickens can fly.
As a boy, I worked on free-range chicken, deep-litter, and battery hen, farms, and soon discovered free-range birds can fly.
I recall seeing one fat Brown Hen being chased by a farm dog; she took off from level ground and flew right across a slurry lagoon twenty yards wide, cackling all the way to safety.
Asian and Bantam Hens are even better aviators.
I love chickens, they are wonderful sensitive creatures. Get close, look into a hen’s eye, whisper softly to her, stroke her back, and you will see what I mean. No wonder Jesus spoke of hens and chicks so often. (How did He use them as illustrations? What aspects of godliness do they reflect?)
Notice also the LORD blessed the fowl, the winged birds were blessed, not their eggs. The Hebrew word used for fowl in the Scripture is owph ofe, which means; feathered, winged, able to fly, that is; birds. The Hebrew word for egg is beytsah: Completely different.
Furthermore, when He blessed the birds He said, let fowl (owph ofe) multiply in the Earth, He did not say, “let eggs multiply in the Earth”, a good job otherwise we’d be knee-deep in broken eggshells with no birds to thrill our hearts by their; beauty, songs, delightful antics, and their taste! Birds can multiply: Eggs cannot.
Now that is God’s order of creation, that’s what the LORD tells us Himself, and it is sufficient for any Bible believing Christian. His order is always right.
God created the Chicken first, not the egg!
There’s not even any genuine logical paradox, because chickens make eggs, eggs don’t make chickens. So chickens have to come first.
A humanist may say that an egg contains a chicken, but it doesn’t, it contains a single cell, the ovum on a yolk-sac, and a couple of ounces of albumen. Most of the eggs you have ever eaten were sterile, unfertilised, and unable to develop into a chick. Indeed, fertilised eggs are regarded as objectionable to consumers, in the fussy West, and are weeded out where possible.
If the chicken who laid the egg was first fertilised by a cockerel, the fertilized ovum may eventually develop inside the egg to form an embryo, then a baby chick; but the egg clearly did not make the chicken, it only contains the developing progeny of the parent birds.
Claiming that “an egg makes a chicken” is false: Hens make chicken eggs, not the other way around.
This leads nicely to another question, concerning teaching your children about the birds and the bees, marriage, and sex.
What should parents say when their children ask: The most embarrassing question of all?
© 10 Colin Melbourne