Perhaps the first lesson for young students being introduced to science should be that much of what they will learn will not necessarily be in accordance with their common sense.

Most people with no experience in science observe the natural world and believe that everything they experience must have an easy, reasonable explanation. However, such is often not the case.

Throughout much of human history, most people believed that the Earth is flat. This belief seemed to make perfectly good sense. After all, how could it be round (a sphere?) If it were round, people on the bottom would fall off or be upside down. (Even today many people still believe that the Earth is flat, and there is even a Flat Earth Society.) However, science has clearly demonstrated that the Earth is spherical, and we now have numerous photos of the Earth as evidence of this fact.

Similarly, most people did not believe that the Earth revolved around the sun and rotated on its own axis. After all, it is the sun that moves, and we can see this. Indeed, in ancient times, many people believed that God pulled the sun across the sky. In the Bible, Joshua told the sun to “stand still” (Joshua 10:12.)

The heliocentric theory was so controversial that the Roman Catholic Church deemed it heretical. They banned books promoting the heliocentric theory. In 1633, the Catholic Inquisition tried Galileo and sentenced him to life in prison. Yet, the heliocentric theory still stands up to critical examination despite what our common sense might tell us.

Sometimes good science gets in the way of a good story. The Adam and Eve myth seems to make more sense than the reality. It certainly seems that at one time there must have been only one man and one woman. However, this myth has been completely falsified by science. We now know from population genetics that species evolve from populations and not individuals. The problem with this for Bible believers is that if we did not all descend from Adam and Eve, then there was no Original Sin and no need for salvation from Jesus.

Amino acids are the basic building blocks of life. Theists maintain that God must have properly organized these acids. However, we have long ago learned that amino acids not only organize themselves, but they do so selectively. The idea of self-organization in nature seems counterintuitive, but it is a reality.

When we look at animals and body parts, they appear to have been designed by some form of intelligence. However, the theory of evolution by natural selection describes why they appear this way. Natural selection is counterintuitive, but again, it continues to withstand scrutiny from creationists, Intelligent Design theorists, and others.

Theists maintain that stars are so majestic that they must have been created by God. How could they have come to be without an intelligent creator? However, stars are the result of natural processes. They come from nebulae, or cosmic clouds of dust and gas. Intense heat is generated and other natural processes occur.

In March of 2012 I visited the aeronautical museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. On their giant Imax screen they displayed photos of what were then considered to be the most spectacular images ever captured by the Hubble telescope. We were able to see nebula nurseries showing the actual births of stars – and there wasn’t evidence of a god anywhere to be found.

Surely something as fantastic as a rainbow must be the result of an intelligent all-powerful creator. Indeed, the Bible says that God created a giant rainbow after the supposed flood as a promise to never again destroy the world by flooding.

Wrong again. Rainbows are the result of the reflection of sunlight off water. The light separates into colors. After the light departs from the water, a rainbow is formed. Is it not better to teach children how rainbows are really formed than to glorify ancient myths?

Theists maintain that DNA must surely be the result of God. After all, information is being transmitted. However, DNA has a lot of “junk,” including pseudogenes. Certainly, this could not be the result of a perfectly intelligent God. On the other hand, this is exactly what we would expect to find if DNA is the result of natural processes. Moreover, viruses are replicated by working their DNA into cells. Are we to believe that a perfectly loving God is trying to kill us and other innocent animals?

There are many other examples of counterintuitive occurrences in nature and science. Perhaps the best example is quantum physics where many scientists believe that some quantum processes do not have any cause whatsoever. The Big Bang was a quantum event and the universe at one time was as tiny as a quantum particle. The universe might be uncaused.

For these reasons and others, we should not expect the findings of science to always be in line with our common sense. If we ever discover the origin of life it should not surprise us to find that it, too, is counterintuitive.