Introduction

According to many evolutionists today, dinosaurs are really not extinct but rather are feeding at our bird feeders even as we speak. For many evolutionists, it would seem, birds simply are dinosaurs. With this sort of bias, it is quite easy for evolutionists to find supposed evidence to support the notion that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

But what does the Bible tell us about the origin of birds, and just how good is the scientific evidence that some dinosaurs evolved into birds?

What Does the Bible Say about the Origin of Birds?

Birds were created on Day Five and dinosaurs on Day Six.

In the first chapter of Genesis, verse 21, we read that on Day Five of creation, God created “every winged fowl after its kind.” This includes birds that flew above the earth (Genesis 1:20). Man and land animals were created on Day Six of the Creation Week (Genesis 1:24–31). Were there land birds that didn’t fly originally? I would leave open the possibility, but a discussion of this is beyond the scope of this chapter. Most ornithologists say that these birds are secondarily flightless (i.e., they lost the ability to fly). This would be due to variance within kind or to mutational losses since creation. So, the best possibility is that birds were created on Day Five as flyers, and some have lost this ability, but I wouldn’t be dogmatic.
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Birds are of many different “kinds.”

Genesis 1:21 says that God created every winged bird after its “kind.” The following verse says they were to multiply, or reproduce; so the logical connection is that birds of the same kind can reproduce. The Hebrew word for “kind” in Genesis refers to any group of animals capable of interbreeding and reproducing according to their type. For example, all dogs and dog-like animals, such as wolves and coyotes, are capable of interbreeding and thus would represent one “kind,” even though some are classified today as different species.

This does not mean, however, that all birds represent a single created kind and thus share a common ancestry. The Bible tells us that there are many different bird kinds (plural). The Levitical dietary laws (Leviticus 11:13–19), for example, list many different bird kinds as being unclean. This gives further biblical support for multiple created bird kinds.[…]