B"H
How do we reconcile the order of creating animals betweeen Genesis and science?
Expanding on this answer:
Like many questions, the answer can be found in the question itself.
"Science" is not one person or one ideology that one "reconciles" with.
It is the current understanding of humans based on the information they have.
Official definition:
knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the
operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through
scientific method
So according to their definition, no one truly knows any "science" unless they know every detail of existence, but they can amas some bits and pieces of "science" through what they know.
The only one who knows everything is the Creator of Heavens and Earth.
The science that humans know changes with humans' understanding.
What was scientifically thought to be true 50 years ago might not be the same as it is now, and according to them, what they think was true 1000 years ago might not be either
(Except, not necessarily...)
The point is, according to their understanding, it's always changing, because human understanding is always changing.
The Creator never changes; thus, everything He said, even thousands of years ago, is completely true now, since He knows everything.
(Especially since Hashem is giving the Torah anew every instant, "Giver of the Torah", and "every day a voice emanates from Mount Chorev", see ד"ה אנכי תשמ"ט)
The specific question was:
So according to bible, birds are created before land animals (like
reptiles). Science says that reptiles are are around before birds.
Birds evolve out of reptiles.
The answer to the question is in the question.
According to the word of the Creator, birds were created before reptiles. The question assumes "being around" and "evolution"...
The creation of the birds and all species happened in a completely miraculous way, just like all other parts of creation.
Rashi tells us that they all miraculously were created from the ground, fully grown and fully alive at the time they were created, each day being 24 hours
(Btw, 24 hours is a huge amount of time for creation to take place, considering that Hashem could simply think everything into existence instantaneously. In fact, the difference between the smallest unit of time (instantaneous) relative to 6 × 24 hours, is much greater than the difference between 6 × 24 hours and 14 billion years)
There's no hint of species evolving from each other in the Torah..
If one says that Hashem caused evolution to happen, then that would be:
Completely illogical, since Hashem deliberately taking 24 hours to miraculously form the species from the ground is already way more than He needs to, to say He stretched the process out over millions of years through "natural processes" would not only be unnecessary, but illogical, and
There's no Torah source for such an idea in any universally accepted sources, no Rishonim, no Midrashim etc. The only people who are saying it are those who try to change the simple meaning of the Torah according to the current, limited understanding of some modern day scientists.
If one says that Hashem created the "big bang", then the creation of one single atom/whatever the big bang was supposed to be from, from completely nothing, is an infinitely greater novelty than creating already living species from already existing dust.
At a certain point, one has to choose between what modern scientists say, and what the Torah says.
Just ask yourself: if it was certain to you that you had to choose one or the other, which one would it be?
See also the Rebbe's explanation of the Torah and the age of the universe (which also discusses evolution).
To quote a relevant part:
We may now summarize the weaknesses, nay, hopelessness, of all
so-called scientific theories regarding the origin and age of our
universe:
(a) These theories have been advanced on the basis of observable data
during a relatively short period of time, of only a number of decades,
and at any rate not more than a couple of centuries.
(b) On the basis of such a relatively small range of known (though by
no means perfectly) data, scientists venture to build theories by the
weak method of extrapolation, and from the consequent to the
antecedent, extending to many thousands (according to them, to
millions and billions) of years!
(c) In advancing such theories, they blithely disregard factors
universally admitted by all scientists, namely, that in the initial
period of the birth of the universe, conditions of temperature,
atmospheric pressure, radioactivity, and a host of other cataclystic
factors, were totally different from those existing in the present
state of the universe.
(d) The consensus of scientific opinion is that there must have been
many radioactive elements in the initial stage which now no longer
exist, or exist only in minimal quantities; some of them - elements
that cataclystic potency of which is known even in minimal doses.
(e) The formation of the world, if we are to accept these theories,
began with a process of colligation (of binding together) of single
atoms or the components of the atom and their conglomeration and
consolidation, involving totally unknown processes and variables.
In short, of all the weak scientific theories, those which deal with
the origin of the cosmos and with its dating are (admittedly by the
scientists themselves) the weakest of the weak.
It is small wonder (and this, incidentally, is one of the obvious
refutations of these theories) that the various scientific theories
concerning the age of the universe not only contradict each other, but
some of them are quite incompatible and mutually exclusive, since the
maximum date of one theory is less than the minimum date of another.
If anyone accepts such a theory uncritically, it can only lead him
into fallacious and inconsequential reasoning. Consider, for example,
the so-called evolutionary theory of the origin of the world, which is
based on the assumption that the universe evolved out of existing
atomic and subatomic particles which, by an evolutionary process,
combined to form the physical universe and our planet, on which
organic life somehow developed also by an evolutionary process, until
homo-sapiens emerged. It is hard to understand why one should readily
accept the creation of atomic and subatomic particles in a state which
is admittedly unknowable and inconceivable, yet should be reluctant to
accept the creation of planets, or organisms, or a human being, as we
know these to exist.
He then continues to discuss why fossil "evidence" isn't valid, see there.