The question “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” does not say “what came first, the chicken or the chicken’s egg”. Dinosaurs laid eggs long before chickens existed, so the egg came before the chicken. If you are trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the chicken’s egg, you would have to decide at which point in the chickens evolution it became the chicken of today. Then, the parent would not be a chicken, but, having laid a chicken egg, the egg would survive and hatch. Therefore, again, the egg came before the chicken.
As to the question about the color of the egg, I own chickens, and it is only the shell that is a different color because of the breed of chicken. The egg itself is basically the same.
Someone already quoted this column, but I’ll provide a link to it anyway.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
More semi-related information here.
Which end of the egg comes out of the chicken first? (Week of: 29-Mar-96)
[Special Creationist Hat ON]
In the Bible, it says that God created birds on the fifth day, so therefore the chicken came first.
**
[Special Creationist Hat OFF]
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Wouldn’t have to be incest, just pædophilia.
Tom~
Just wanted to point out that Mr. John posted that way back on 8-13-99. Remember 1999? Before Y2K?
Is he even still around?
Also wanted to know why this thread has been resurrected. Is it because it’s the Easter season?
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
I heard the answer on a sitcom last night… it was a tie. 
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
Well, there’s certainly room for debate. A case can be made that its what produced the egg, not what comes from it that established the nature of the egg. You crack open the egg from a proto-chicken and there’s nothing inside. It’s an empty proto-chicken egg, not a full “nothing egg.” You crack it open an a diamond falls out, a diamond in a proto-chicken egg. You crack it open and a mini-person hops out: A person in a proto-chicken egg! What about before it hatches. It is an open question what type of egg it is? I’m not saying these considerations are conclusive, just that it’s fairly debatable.
Tony
Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry skies above me and the moral law within me. – Kant
Well, that’s EASY!!! The egg came first. Dinosaurs laid eggs, way before chickens came into play. 
An egg is a presumptuous chicken, and the real comes before the presumptuous, thus, the chicken before the egg.
The ribozyme.
Actually, I think a more interesting question would be: which came first, the ribozyme or the mycelle?
The question assumes that you can tell a chicken from a non-chicken. While this may seem reasonable. I think this is a problem. When we look at animals that exist today, there is a big difference between chicken and non-chicken, but they (chickens) evolved slowly from “proto-chickens”. I don’t think you have a definite line between the chickens and the proto-chickens. The whole idea of classification was created by man.
There is no answer because you cannot distinguish chicken from non-chicken.
Virtually yours,
“Feynman was wrong.
I understand Quantum Physics completely.
Anybody seen my drugs?” - A WallyM7™ .sig
Of course. Haven't you ever heard of..........unbleached flour????You’re right that there is no definite line between chicken and proto-chicken, but I don’t know why this is relevant. There are any number of defensible places to draw the line; wherever you draw the line, a chicken will hatch from an egg produced by a proto-chicken. I say that egg is the first chicken egg, but that is just my definition. So the egg came first.
The point is, wherever you draw the line, the egg came first, as long as you define egg by what hatches from it, not by what produced it.
Of course, if you intepret the question to mean, which came first, the chicken or the egg of any species, the egg obviously came first.
Hopefully, I can convince you to accept “hopefully” as a disjunct adverb.
Frankly, I would be lying if I said I were confident.
Perhaps this subject is simply too complex for me to explain.
Unfortunately, I would be lucky to explain my way out of a paper bag.
I don’t understand why this question is considered profound. The answer is very simple, IMHO:
If you believe in Creationism, the chicken came first, as God created it when he created all other non-human, land-based animals (on the 5th day, if memory serves).
If you believe in Evolutionism, the Egg came first as a logical progression from quasi-science’s oft-quoted “life-creating primordial ooze” to the egg from a non-Chicken that hatched the first Chicken.
Can anyone poke holes in this theory?
[QUOTE=;261567]
Reminds me of a joke:
A chicken and an egg are relaxing after sex. The egg is smoking a cigarette and says with a pissed off look, “Well, I guess we know the answer to that question!”
whammy.
[/QUOTE]
Chicken came first. Egg is just lucky to get laid by the chicken.
Reanimated neo-dinosaurs laid those eggs.
Zombie
Chickens
Caution
Were usernames not associated with each post back in '99 or did those from the first 11 posts to this thread just mistakenly get dropped in some subsequent upgrade? Strange that they’re missing, each just registering “Guest”.
At some point the posts became disassociated with the profile of the poster who made them. I assume the default member status is “Guest.”
Anyone responding should note that this thread originated in the Paleocyberic Era.
Is “chicken of the sea” live birth or hatchlings?