Neither the chicken nor the egg came first; they are dependently arisen.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'essentialist' towards the end of this post is my previous debate initial post so my position is better stated. but to address you concerns. you are arguing that chickens must come from eggs, and eggs must come from chickens, to my understanding, so neither came first. the problem is that we must draw a line for what constitutes a chicken. when we do that, an egg will arise that has a chicken that fills the DNA criteria at the line we've drawn. before getting further into this, i'd like to clarify a big hypothetical i used. instead of the regressive train wreck scenario i used below, i would rather use every chicken in existence now. it would be impractical or impossible to do given chicken ancesters are extinct, but if we bred each chicken alive now, with ancester generations further and further back, there would be a point where mating stops. at this point we use the last chicken that is able to mate back into acestery, and map its DNA, and use this as the chicken threshhold. you are arguing essnetially what others have argued, as i had predicted in my opening posts in threads. that the parents of those first chickens are so close, that they too must be said to be a chicken if the egg is said to be a chicken. not necessarily. we can call them chicken hybrids if you would like, but it is not insignficant that those parents cannot breed with modern chickens, but the chicken in the egg can. if we use modern chickens as the prototype, those ancester species should not constitute chickens proper. ====================== answer: the egg. the lithmus test for whether the chicken or egg came first, should be a defined list of DNA being met. science is inexact in listing what constitutes a species. if the animal meets criteria like two wings a beak two chicken legs etc, then it is a chicken. the problem is that this is an inexact science. it is sufficient for everyday use, sure. but a line has to be drawn. how do we draw it? the only way is to make a criteria in DNA and stick to it. we run into a problem similar to someone trying to sell something. a man wants to sell his 57 chevy for ten thousand. would be take a penny less? sure. two pennies? you see where i'm going with this. the man must set a limit. 9500 and not a penny less? so someone were to offer him a penny less and he does take it, is it really a firm limit? in practice, the man might take it, but we all know a point must be drawn. in practice, scientists might take a nucleotide or piece of DNA less, but a point must be drawn. what constitutes a chicken then will have a firm limit. in the line of chicken like animals before a chicken, there will be close calls no doubt. but it will be one animal that will evetually fill the criteria, meet the DNA match's minimum. and that animal will be first an egg, which hatches into the chicken that meets the match. practically, the parents of the chicken might be called chickens in everyday use, but a line indeed must be drawn, so they technically are not chickens. ------------------------ con will most likely offer no reason why we shouldn't be able to define what DNA is required to be a chicken, and have a cut off point. if we do this cut off point, the parents would not be chickens. con will likely argue that because the chicken can mate with its parents or are much like them, that we should be able to call its parents chickens too. but we have to have that cut off in DNA and have cut off with parents, even if they are very similar. cause in fact, it's not even necessarily arbitrary. if we have a regression for what are clearly chickens, and what are clearly not chickens but are ancesters.... eventually you will find some that cannot mate, a true hallmark for speciation. for example. x is not chicken. y is a chicken. they cannot mate. y's parents cannot mate with X's offspring. if you keep going back in time with the chicken, and forward in time with the non chicken, eventually you will get to a point where they can in fact mate. this is around the cutoff for chickens. once we get to the point that they can mate, we have to step back a generation to the point they can't mate. and then we would map their DNA. this would be a highly complex project, finding those who can mate and those who can't. and in some ways it'd be impossible since ansesters of chickens are extinct. but, we know in principle this point exists. that theoretical point is the DNA cut off point. the first chicken would be the first in that train wreck of possible mating that can't mate with its acestorial counterparts. there would surely have to be a point where the offspring couldn't mate with teh ancester, but the parents could. it has to happen at some point. and it might not be exact in practice.... the offspring might not be able to mate usually, but at certain attempts could, and or its offspring might be able to but the parent cant, cause there is a lot of variability with being able to mate or not, gentetically and in practice. but there is a certain theoretical point where it's not possible to mate. and this is a species that comes first as an egg. perhaps we could make note of the fact that the parent is so similar to its offspring, that we could call them chicken hybrids. this is because we'd have a line of non chicken ancesters with a line of chicken lineage.... and a lot of cross over.