I do not agree with some of the friends here who believed that asking this question is pointless. This is a very good question, if someone creates spams and meaningless replies, it is the person who needs to be educated, and not the question itself. Try looking at any serious science books on topic related to searching for origin of life, the question of chicken and egg always pop up. Not just in sciences, this question also carries weight in philosophy and religion.

Philosophy
If chicken needs egg and egg needs chicken, this is a typical type of causal feedback loop. Putting our heads inside the cloudy water of this continuous loop yields no answer, hence a paradox.

Every human who exists has a mother.....but obviously the human race hasn't a mother ------ Bertrand Russell

When looking at a macroscopic or microscopic level to a question, it exhibits a different attribute, which in this case, mother (chicken) may not be necessary.

Science
A blacksmith shapes iron using iron tools, which means he needs iron instruments to make iron instruments.

Question: Where did the first iron instrument come from?

Answer: The first blacksmith might has used stones, or woods, to shape the first iron instruments.

What does this mean? What gave raise to a sword or an arrow (a child) may not be an iron instruments (mother). Even without an iron instruments (mother), the sword or the arrow (the child) could be raised irregardless.

In the chicken and egg scenario, one thing for sure is the DNA and its RNA are similar and forms the continuation of the life form irregardless of which form comes first, although the egg is more likely to happen first. The nucleic acids and proteins formed a mutual benefit properties that locked within the so called "egg" and giving raise to the life form so called "chicken".

Religion
More interested with logic and reason (philosophy) and science (dialog with nature), not going to discuss here.

My apology for unable to reply sooner, was kind of bz lately.
This thread asked for which one came first, chicken or egg and not what was the source of origin of an egg or a chicken? By asking this question, it is off topic slightly as you are asking what was the source of the origin of life forms.

R u expecting me to "answer" this very puzzle of mankind? The origin of life which is still being discussed, debated and continuingly discovered in philosophy and science. What I have is only an opinion and some point of view.

There are two branches of philosophy and sciences that touch this, holism and reductionism.

Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system (physical, biological, chemical, mental, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone. The general principle of holism was summarized by Aristotle in the metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts".

A chicken or an amoeba is alive simply because the system as a whole determines and control how the parts behave. The consciousness or life exists because of this interaction between parts.

When you go down town and look at a huge neon light/LED display board showing an actor (says Brad Pitt) on the screen, do you think the actor's soul goes inside the screen? Else why do you think he is Brad Pitt and not your neighbour John? The screen is merely consist of billions of light bulb/LED. This is where holism comes in, when billions of dots combined together,"the whole" gives raise a new attribute, which is a person called Brad Pitt. However, when you try to study each dots that produce this body, Brad Pitt can never be found from each of the dots.

On the other hand, reductionism is sometimes seen as the opposite of holism. Reductionism in science says that a complex system can be explained by reduction to its fundamental parts. For example, the processes of biology are reducible to chemistry and the laws of chemistry are explained by physics.

String theory
Look at the following, which is the smallest particle that exists: atom -> proton -> quark -> string
In different era, the smallest elimentary particle always being refined as sciences and technology progresses.

Under string theory, proton, electron, positron, boson, fermion (strong force, weak force), photon (EM wave), graviton (general and special theory) all these elements are identical fundementally and the only different is they are strings that vibrates in N dimensions, and thus give raise to the charge, mass, flavor differences.

If neutron, electron, proton (particle), graviton (gravity) and light (photon) are all but the "same" elements, What is the different between says a chicken to an amoeba as they are from the very same elementary particles. The interaction (the orientation, the force) between these strings are unique and gave raise to all different objects and life forms that we observed today.

This is what M-Theory (supersting theory) suggested, as part of the initiative to combine all the four forces (as above) into one Theory Of Everything (TOE).

For your question, what is the source of origin of an egg, what about the egg was raised as a result of many different strings (proton, positron, electron, neutron) with different orientation and different forces that combines become protein structure (the hardware, body) and nucleic acids (the software, DNA) and forms an egg?

And this different combination and orientation of elimentary particles forms different life forms we observed today.

If you are interest, please take a look at the following book "What Is Life" by Erwin Schrodinger, a famous physicist in quantum mechanic. There are many relationship between life and quantum mechanic, and quantum mechanic provides a very good mechanism to explain life itself.

So your next question is how did the first string or first few strings exists?

This post has been edited by nice.rider: May 19 2010, 05:11 PM