Resolved: The chicken came before the egg.

Previously, my opponent and I came to an agreement that pro shall give the opening argument.

**Your opening argument must be at least 100 characters in length.**

Before I begin, I thank my opponent for creating this debate, wish him good luck, and ask that voters vote on who did the better debating, NOT based on which side you agree with or on unproven multi-account rumors.

Observation 1: The egg described in the topic is a chicken egg.
This debate deals with the philosophical question of whether the chicken or the egg came first, with the standard arguments being that chickens lay eggs and chickens come from eggs. Thus, it is only logical that the assumption that the eggs being talked about are chicken eggs would be carried over to this debate. Otherwise, the point of this debate would be ruined, as it would not be in a misconstrued context.

My contentions are

Contention 1: "The chicken" came out of the debate.com coding before "the egg".
When one types in the topic for a debate, the "string" of characters is run through a program, the end result being the topic printed out at the top of the webpage. When a program runs, it manipulates a string from left to right. Thus, the "the chicken" portion of the resolution came out completed slightly before the "the egg" portion was completed.

Contention 2: the dictionary

When we look the words "chicken" and "egg", we can see that chicken alphabetically comes before egg. Hence, when the dictionary was made, the "chicken" indeed came before the "egg".

Contention 3: etymology

According to etomonline.com, the "coward" definition of chicken came around 1300, with the animal definition of chicken coming even earlier. This website also states that egg was created around 1340. Thus, we can see that the word chicken came into existence before the word egg.

Contention 4: typical arguments

This will address the typical chicken vs. egg debate alluded to earlier. I will divide into 2 sub-sections. One will assume Creationism is correct, and the other will assume that Evolution is correct.

Sub. A - Creationism

This assumes that a god created everything. Now, there is evidence that an intelligent designer created chickens rather than eggs (Genesis 1:24), but if you do not accept this evidence, let us look at it logically. Which would have a better chance at surviving, an animal that can survive climate changes and defend itself, or a fragile egg with no defense mechanisms that must have certain range of temperatures to survive? As the answer is the animal, it is only logical that the chicken was created and thus came before the chicken egg.

Sub. B. Evolution

Now, let us assume that the chicken evolved from a species called "bob". Now let us say that genetic mutation occurs within a bob egg and created a chicken inside it. Now, it is still a "bob" egg as it is the bob that laid it. When the chick hatches, there will be a chicken with no chicken eggs. Thus according to evolution, the chicken came before the egg.

As I have presented my case, I await a rebuttal

Before I begin I would like to thank my opponent for accepting the challenge, and I, too, would like to remind voters to vote for the best argued side.

In negation of the current resolution, "The chicken came before the egg", I provide the following definitions in order to provide further clarification concerning what is to be debated:

Chicken: the common domestic fowl, specifically a member of the genus Gallus, the subgenus gallus, and the species domesticus

Before: at an earlier point in time

Egg: the reproductive body produced by the female of certain members of the Kingdom "Animalia" consisting of an ovum together with its nutritive and protective envelopes and having the capacity to develop into a new individual capable of independent existence

Observation 1: The egg described in the topic is an egg, not necessarily a chicken egg. It is sometimes interpreted that this debate topic deals with the philosophical question of whether the chicken or the chicken egg came first, with the standard arguments being that chickens lay chicken eggs and chickens come from chicken eggs. My opponent assumed this interpretation to be the single, true interpretation; however, if I wanted it to be this specific interpretation, then I would have labeled "egg" with the adjective "chicken". In creating this topic, I instead labeled "egg" plainly as "egg". In this way, the minds of the debaters benefit by being able to interpret the resolution in multiple ways as they would with the NFL resolutions, therefore, allowing for more efficient practice for local tournaments.

Observation 2: Because I represent the negative side, upon me is placed the burden of refutation; therefore, I will spend the majority of my case refuting my opponent's arguments and/or refuting the resolution.

Pro's Contention 1: My opponent's logic of this contention is concerned with the use of coding, strings, and characters. What he fails to realize, however, is that the entire statement can be defined as a string. Chapter 16 of the Computer Science 1 AP textbook that both, my opponent and I, use for school defines a string as: a set of characters, which behaves as a single unit. The entire resolution is a string of characters, and because it acts as a single unit, the entire output is created at the same moment. In addition, once again my opponent makes an assumption that is incorrect. He assumes that a string is manipulated from left to right; however, he fails to remember that he, himself, has recently completed a lab assignment in Computer Science 1 AP that concerns the checking and creation of palindromes through the reading and output of strings from right to left.

Pro's Contention 2:

SPA: My opponent has no proof that the page of the dictionary that consists of the word chicken was created before the page that consists of the word egg. For all we know, the dictionary could possibly have been printed "last page first" so that the pages would not have to be switched. (e.g. some computer printers print the first page of a document first, and in the occurrence of multiple pages, the pages must manually be switched to put them into correct order.)

SPB: If we look to the scientific name of the chicken, Gallus gallus domesticus, it is obvious that "egg" is alphabetically prior.
Pro's Contention 3: The debate over this specific contention is likely to be decided on the voter's opinion of which debater has the more valid source. My opponent uses "etomonline.com" as his source for etymology, and claims that "the word chicken came into existence before the word egg." I, however, trust Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary, which states:

Egg: Etymology: Middle English egge, from Old Norse egg; akin to Old English ǣg egg, Latin ovum, Greek ōion

Date: 13th century

Chicken: Etymology: Middle English chiken, from Old English cicen young
chicken; akin to Old English cocc cock

Date: 14th century

Pro's Contention 4:

SPA: Creationism

SSPA: It is possible for the Creator to create the chicken egg prior to creating the actual chicken. According to my definitions, an egg is a chicken egg if it is a reproductive body produced by the female of certain members of the Kingdom "Animalia" consisting of an ovum together with its nutritive and protective envelopes and having the capacity to develop into a chicken. It is possible, therefore, that the Creator created the chicken egg directly, and through it, the chicken, but direct or not, the Creator created the chicken.

SSPB: Logically, if the Creator, which/who is perfect in power and justice (Black's Law Dictionary), created everything, then the Creator would have created eggs to create the animals. As seen specifically on the Christian Holiday of Easter, eggs represent new life. If all the animals born of eggs were created by this Creator, then there would be no other animal to harm them because they too would be in eggs. The animal eggs would be less susceptible to infection, disease, and harm than the animals because eggs don't need to take in any foreign matter like nutrition found in plants. The eggs would supply the newborn animal with a nutrition supply before it starts to forage on its own.

SPB: Evolution
According to Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, "…the egg came first."

According to a multitude of scientists, the chicken evolved from the Red Jungle Fowl. I'm rushing to finish this so that I can catch the bus to school, so I'll post up two of the many sites with the information I would have used to refute your argument and/or possibly create another one of mine.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/26/chicken.egg/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/5019682.stm

Con Contention 1: As explained in Observation 1, a "chicken egg" is a type of "egg", but "egg" in the resolution is a general sense of the word without necessary concern for a specific type. According to Charles Bournes, chairman of trade body Great British Chicken, "Eggs were around long before the first chicken arrived." (e.g. dinosaur eggs, jungle fowl eggs, etc.)
Therefore, because eggs existed before chickens, the chicken did not come before the egg.

Kritik: I don't have time at the moment to write it all out, but I'm placing this here to inform my opponent that I have one and will most likely use it. I admit that it will concern the existence of time. This cannot be seen as abusive because my opponent now knows the general tagline of this argument, and he can research reasons as to why Kritiks ought not be used.

For these reasons I urge a negative vote.

I apologize for the inconvenience. My partner and I are nearing the end of our school year, so Final Exams and last minute tests are occupying a great majority of our time. In addition, my opponent is having technical difficulties with his computer, and while he can go to the school library and post a rebuttal there, as i said, our free time is very limited.

Moving on to the actual debate, I would like to extend all my arguments and refutations, and as it would be unfair for me to post any new ones, I shall wait for my opponent to refute before i add or change anything to or in my case.

Thank you.