How a Medical Doctor Found Amazing Common Ground Between Science and Faith

Every time I read the first sentence of the Bible, I go, really? I don't believe they had any special physics classes in ancient Judea. In the beginning, God said, let there be light. Exactly what we say today in the Big Bang. This is one place, I don't do a lot of that. I don't try to make the Bible a scientific textbook. But here's one place in the beginning, God said, let there be light. And that's how we started with the Big Bang. An enormous amount of light. Our Bay Area Innovator today is Dr. Bill West, an oncologist and author of Sacred Science, a book that bridges faith and science in a deeply personal way. A lifelong scientist and practicing Christian, Dr. West explores the mysteries of the universe, from the Higgs field and DNA to quantum entanglement and consciousness, and asks whether science itself may be a modern revelation of the divine. In this episode, we will talk about the blueprints of creation, the spiritual implications, and why he believes God may be the ultimate mathematician. This is Bay Area Innovators, and I'm your host, Steve Espas. Dr. West, welcome to our program. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for asking me to be on. Thank you. And thank you for joining us from Memphis, Tennessee. That's a pretty special place. We appreciate you being joining us from there. So I want to start with the age-old dialogue between science and faith. And, you know, through your book, you are able to bring this dialogue in a very positive and in a way that's not conflicting with each other. And I think that's very important. So there are so many elements that the way this universe was created, the way life was created, that's very unique and very almost impossible. If you look at it from a probability perspective, it's very unlikely that it happened that way. And you bring this in your book in a very clear way in several aspects. So let's start with that. Let's start with something like the Big Bang and the creation of the early stage of the universe. Please tell us what you discovered. I'll respond to your initial comment because I think it's important. Scientists in the 17th, 18th century felt like they were reading the thoughts of God. They were theologians of a sort. And then we came to Darwin and we can just talk about that later, but that kind of upset the apple cart. And now we're back in the modern day where 60% of scientists are believers. But there's a general feeling, let's keep God out of the subject so we don't stop short. Let's continue to investigate. So that's kind of a broad sweep of what's happened. The Big Bang has been clearly, clearly proven. I know a lot of people don't believe it, but if you look at the acceleration of the universe today, we are continuing to accelerate. And if you move that movie back, you reach a single point. A great Catholic theologian, Lemaître, called it the primordial egg. And of course, I always ask, well, if there was an egg, where was the chicken? But we began in a single point and expanded so rapidly and so dramatically into this universe today. We're not even sure how big it is. But in the process of that initial formation, we created the fundamental light elements that would be necessary to turn on the stars. So it's really an epic story of, I think, just brilliance. It really points to a creator plan. Yes. Now, at the beginning, there was just light, right? And this is scientific. People can do research on this. We would welcome that. But there was just light. There were photons and quarks. And then something happened that allowed for mass to start to exist. Please tell us about that. Well, you've gotten into my first eight blueprints for the universe. And it is an equation, E equals mc squared. Energy can be stored in mass. And it's, of course, Einstein's famous equation. It's his equation. And if you think E equals m, so energy and matter are different forms of the same thing. But then you could put so much energy in that mass, it could be multiplied by c squared. And unfortunately, if you run that in reverse and convert energy, I'm sorry, mass back to energy with that 18-factor multiplier c squared, you get the atom bomb. And that's how, unfortunately, we really have known it in the modern day. But E equals mc squared is how the light gave birth to mass. And that was the first step on the journey to us, to Earth, to people. Now, why is that unusual? Or why would that require a divine creation, would you think? I would answer it this way. I look at eight blueprints that created the universe. If you didn't have all eight, we wouldn't be here. All eight work as a team to build this universe. So I see God, I see each one of them as a work of art, as a beautiful, super intelligent piece that was absolutely necessary. All eight of them have to work together. If we just had E equals mc squared, well, I don't know what we'd have. If energy didn't convert this mass, we wouldn't have planets. We wouldn't have Earth. We wouldn't have palm trees. So it's an unfolding that involves eight separate, interacting, what I call divine pieces of work. The first of which is the convertibility of energy into matter. Yeah, so please tell us about that. Again, we have quarks that initially do not have mass. And then something happens that they create mass. What happened and when was this discovered? You know, I find that people have a hard time with quark because they're not that used to the word. But quarks built the nucleus of the atom. So they have to make protons and neutrons. And so they come in two flavors. They come in up and down. And ups carry a two-thirds positive charge, like two-thirds of the charge of an electron. And down quarks are one-third negative charge. So they happen in teams of three. So if you look at the possible teams of three, two up quarks are four-third positive, one-third negative quark down. You have a proton, three-thirds, one, matching the electron. If you have one up quark and two down, so you have a two-thirds up, two times one-third down, you have a neutron, which was very important in the stars when the stars began to build the table of the elements. They needed to be able to add mass without affecting the charge. So neutrons and protons together built the elements that are created in the stars. And again, this is the arrangement that this happened. It's pretty amazing. Tell us about the Higgs field, which was discovered recently and is able to create the mass. I think the Higgs field is the most important scientific piece that everyone really ought to understand. Something had to make our universe physical. If all we had was energy, if all we had was light, well, light has no mass. It can't cooperate with other light. So it had to become something that could build things. That meant matter, which meant the fundamental elements. So in the early 20 minutes of the universe, an enormous amount of protons were built. Now, again, protons are two up quarks and one down. And those would go out in clouds onto spacetime, would get packed into balls, and would create stars. And then a special little particle would light up the star and make it shine. And it would begin the nuclear fusion in the star to build heavier elements. And then that star would go through its lifespan, die, scatter its elements out in the space dust. And that would happen three times until finally we have our sun and it forms its solar system and our planet. Now, let's talk about the nuclear fusion that happens in the stars. And I want to quote something here. And this is from a scientific journal, an Australian journal. And it's about the fusion of carbon in stars with two helium atoms entangled to form barium and the third helium to create carbon instead of barium-8. So carbon-12 instead of barium-8. And again, it's a- It's beryllium. Beryllium, excuse me. Right. And it's- B-E-R-Y-L-L-I-U-M. Right. It's the perfect- Oh, yes, yes. And it's the perfect quantum leap that makes carbon the most common element in the universe. According to the scientific journal, it says this process is so unlikely that for many years astrophysicists were at a loss to explain how carbon and heavier elements can be created in the universe. And again, the human body has, of course, a lot of water, but 18.5% is carbon. Correct. So tell us about that. Your thoughts about this design that made this happen. Well, I'll tell you about- I think it was Boyle was a scientist who looked at the abundance of carbon in our universe and said, somebody wanted a lot of carbon. And the way that happened, you should go from helium-4 and helium-4 making beryllium, and then another four would make carbon-12. Well, what happened, and he presumed this, that carbon would take the same quantum leap and be right there with beryllium. And so then it became time to take that third step. Instead of going carbon-beryllium, it would go helium-carbon. And carbon would be the main product of the star, as though someone knew we were going to need a lot of carbon for plants and people. Yeah, I think in your book, there's a quote from Pope Pius XII, which says that the Big Bang theory is scientific evidence for a God-created universe. Of course, I think in the Bible, you know, God said, let there be light. And then, you know, this is so similar to the Big Bang. Any thoughts on that? 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So no, first story in the Bible. This is one place. I don't do a lot of that. I don't try to make the Bible a scientific textbook. But here's one place. In the beginning, God said, let there be light. And that's how we started with the Big Bang. An enormous amount of light. Now, I'm going to move on to another idea or another thought that you bring up in your book. This is the fact that mathematical formulas or equations, as well as genes and other elements that create life. But let's stay with the mathematical formulas. They are stored in a different dimension. And then they are being extracted to appear in this universe the way they do. Can you talk about that? Well, of course, that goes back to a philosopher named Plato who believed there was a higher dimension of ideal forms. And they represented, I'll call them blueprints, for building this universe. And there's a lot of evidence today that that's correct. Because as I've already said, this Higgs field makes things physical. When these atoms are first created, if they didn't have mass, they would fly like light. Light goes around the Earth seven times a second. It's never going to form anything stable. So we had to have stable atoms that built stable molecules that would go on and build proteins and DNA for life. And it required mass. Peter Higgs looks at an equation. So, you know, if this field, which is an area of activity, filled the entire universe, which has been called the Higgs field, it would encode the proper mass, the perfect quantity of mass, which is what it does. So when these particles are created from light, they immediately encounter what are called Higgs bosons. And those Higgs bosons encode them with the right amount of mass. Each particle gets just the right mass, the electron a certain amount, the proton a certain amount. And it's a marvelous system that we all take for granted. I mean, every day we're walking through space time. Every day we're walking through the Higgs field. And that was fundamental to our universe today. So that we can have a physical universe with physical atoms that make molecules. And again, you think that these mathematical formulas are stored in a dimension where they can be taken? I think that's a compelling theory. We have all the great mathematicians, all of them. Penrose is a great example. If you know, he's now Sir Roger Penrose for his work on the black hole. He believes in his mind's eye, he can visit this mathematical landscape and retrieve the occasions that he needs to describe the black hole. If there is a higher library of mathematical equations, then it makes perfect sense there's a higher library of the equations for life, that which we call DNA and proteins. And we could get into that later. But I believe that's how God ordained the rollout of the species from an alternate library in that same higher dimension. What I think it's... Which I think of as heaven, by the way, but who knows? What I think is fascinating about your book and the way you explain this is that you're basically not denying the evolution. You're just saying that it was intelligent evolution. It was created to appear that way. It wasn't coincidental, but it still went through those steps. Let's move on to the creation of life and the miracle of how life was created. What does science know and where is the missing link that you think happened? Well, we live in an area that feels so comfortable with DNA. Very few of us stop to think, where did DNA come from? Where did it come from? We actually have no idea. I doubt if anybody has ever been told that. But suddenly we have this wondrous double helix molecule that carries a special code. It's a second code. We've talked about the first code of the eight blueprints that built the universe. Now we've got a code that comes with DNA. And it has three important codes. One code tells how to make a protein. It's called the triplet code. We have 20 amino acids, cook them up in this, like beads on a string, and make these proteins. A second code in DNA is regulatory, moving up and down the DNA chain to say which gene should be active. So imagine a baby developing, a fetus developing. That's a very active code. OK, we need a liver. Now we need a heart. Now we need lungs. OK, now let's turn that off and turn that on. You can imagine that happening in the mother's body. It's just really miraculous. And that's the code of regulation. And I may be going to now embarrass myself and block the third code, but it's also regulatory. That has to do when the DNA duplicates itself. It has to divide, make new copies. We replicate our genome one trillion times per day. Wow. We didn't talk about this yet, but can you tell us what gave you the idea to write this book? What was the element that made you say, OK, I want to study this and I want to expose what I know? About three or four years ago, I read that the single most rapidly expanding religious affiliation is none. N-O-N-E. Which then raised the question in my mind, well, what are they believing in? And it turns out that they believe now that their most solid foundation is science. That then raised the question in my mind, well, what science are they believing in? And that's why I went to these elements of the universe and I began to see this pattern that it required these eight blueprints to build the universe. And then I began to realize, well, no one knows where DNA comes from. It brings a second unbelievable code. We didn't know how DNA got to this universe. And I'll tell you the story. Francis Crick, who was given the Nobel Prize for discovering the double helix before he died, made this statement. It could not have come, could not have arisen on planet Earth. It must have been flown in from outer space on a rock. So here we have these eight blueprints of the universe. Now we have these codes of life that we have no idea where they came from. We just have DNA and we take it for granted. And yet we don't know from whence it comes. I want to talk about water because it's a very special element in our universe. And of course, it's what enables life. There's so many elements that make life possible, but water clearly, it's a big one. It's an essential one. And water has such a special characteristic, right? Compared to, I would think, all other elements, water in solid form floats. Instead of all other elements, a solid form of that element goes, you know, it's heavier, goes to the bottom. But for water, it's lighter and goes above. Any thoughts on that? How is it possible that just one element, which happens to be the most important element for life, has to have this characteristic? Well, that's part of a larger topic called the fine-tuned universe. We live in a fine-tuned universe that looks built for life. And water is one of the most special components of that. If we didn't have the perfect water, we wouldn't be here. And what makes water so different, it's H2O, but it's the angle of the oxygen atoms attached to the hydrogen that means it can fit together two water molecules in a special way so that they can form ice, so that they can form steam. And the importance about them forming ice is, ice is lighter than solid water. It's the only solid that, when it freezes, is lighter than the fundamental liquid. And that means all of our lakes and rivers in the winter, the water, the ice stays on the top, and life then can thrive in that body of water. So it's been fine-tuned by the angle of the oxygen attaching to the hydrogen. Just one of many examples, actually, of how this universe was tweaked in many different ways to make it friendly to life. Let's move on and talk about the theory of evolution. And this is your book right here. You have a special chapter or a different chapter on the theory of evolution that pretty much changed the world in so many ways. Please tell us about it. I think you're not denying the different species, but... Not at all. But I think you're looking at more of the transition period that's not there. Please tell us about that. Absolutely right. Well, Darwin's theory was that all life could be traced back to a single ancient ancestor. And so if we take, I don't know, a lizard, well, that perhaps came because of modifications, random and minor to the... Let's go the other way. To a lizard, small, random, minor modifications, makes an alligator. He is correct that we can take an existing species and give a pig better fat, give a sheep better wool, modify that species. Darwin was right on when it came to that. He was wrong about the origin of the species, ironically, the name of his book. Species don't begin by one minor step, here, there, there, there, there, and all of a sudden we have a lizard become an alligator. They arise, and the term is de novo, from new. That's because there is a library, as there is a library of math in a higher dimension, there is a library for life. And we have something called the genome, which is where we store our DNA. There's a huge area of that genome that's stored to be the nursery. And actually, mutations go up and travel God's library, come back down into that genome, and they gather. They gather and they make teams of genes. And then all of a sudden, that team of genes will go into production, because it was time for ecolocating bat. You don't have partially ecolocating bats. You don't have bats that don't ecolocate. Just all of a sudden you have this fabulous creature that can swim right, fly right over the top of your head. The same for the whales. They developed ecolocation in the same way, by genes downloading into their genome from a library in a higher dimension. That's how God, he didn't say, okay, now I want this, and I want that, and I want that. He created this library of potentiality that then was recognized as life met different challenges. The genes were available, again, perhaps quiet in the genome, and then sent into production so that life could continue down God's pathway. But it wasn't magic. He didn't take a magic wand and say, now I want a skunk. He had a system built that would create 5 million species over time, attuned to their environment. That's where Darwin was correct, by the way, is there's a kind of animal that will exist on a Galapagos Island down in the Caribbean. And you're not going to put that same animal in Canada. So it had to happen in tune to its environment. So life did evolve, but evolved from God's library, 5 million different species that, guess what, met his ultimate intention, a creature that would climb down from the tree, walk upright, develop hands and tools, and begin to talk and develop speech and be prepared to have an encounter with God. And that was his plan. And that was the end point. Not the end point, but the beginning of our story. Yeah, I think that's the point you're making, that it's not God pointing a magic wand to create a being, but going through these steps that you are mentioning. Exactly. You reference in your book the lungfish, a species that existed for millions of years. And then at one point, something changed. Can you tell us a little bit about the uniqueness of the lungfish? I will. The lungfish is the last creature before life came onto land. It has the largest genome. It's got more genes, more letters of DNA than any other species. And it was only, I think, about two to four years ago, they sequenced the lungfish genome. And they could actually see where it was one gene away from converting its fin into a limb. In other words, they caught evolution in action. And the fin of the lungfish carried everything necessary to become a limb with digits, except it needed one more gene. We can only presume that an ancient lungfish, not the one more ancient than lungfish we have today, developed that last gene, developed limbs and legs with limbs, and crawled on the land. And so the lungfish delivered life to land according to the repertoire of mutations that could be delivered to that fish. It's evolution in action, accomplishing God's purpose of life, controlling the land. So the lungfish had these characteristics, this DNA, for millions of years. And then when the time was right, it developed this last gene, or received this last gene to be able to move on land. Precisely. Now, what I wonder is, maybe for non-scientists or for the ordinary people out there, Darwin's theory is accepted because you studied in schools, and that's how it is. But for the scientists, such as yourselves and others, why are there not more people raising questions as of there's loopholes or there's elements that don't fit the big picture with Darwin's theory? There's a lot of pushback about Darwin's theory. There's a lot of talk about, we need to modify it for the schools. But it's also almost a religion, Darwinism. And accompanying that religion is the randomness of it. So I think that's just a cultural phenomenon that at some point we'll push beyond. Again, Darwin was important. He pointed out the modifications you could make to an animal. And it was okay, reasonable for him to think, if we kept modifying that sheep, it'll become, I don't know what, a cow? I don't think so. But that's the way he saw it. But today, I think we would say those random variations modify the features of an established species. Again, pigs can have more fat or less. Animals can be modified. But the species itself is a new creation, I believe, from downloading genes from this higher lottery into a genome. Over at deep time, by the way, ecolocation involves hundreds of genes. And that took a long time to preload into the genome before we could have ecolocation in a bat. So it's a process with God's blessing. There's a certain freedom to it. There's free will to it. But we have to adapt. Animals have to adapt to their circumstance. You know, we can't put a sheep in the same place as a T-Rex. There's a time and a place for everything. And God set up a system that works that way. Now, the answer I almost constantly hear, we almost constantly hear when a scientist or pretty much a prominent person is being asked about God creating life and creating the universe. Almost the first time, the first answer is that, well, if we accept that, then the next step is who created God. And now whether that question is even respectful or appropriate, it's a different story. But any thoughts on, first of all, why that question even comes up in that way? Or how would you even answer that? Well, that question is nonsensical to me. You know, I guess I'd go back to some ancient philosophers. Everything has a beginning. I think that was at, what was the five-point way? And I'm going to block the famous philosopher. But there is a beginning. And I think it's nonsensical to believe that the plan, that beginning shows up later in the process. I believe we were pre-planned. I think this universe was pre-planned. I think life was pre-planned. Not as a magician would do it, but with these libraries in a higher dimension that would be made available when the time came for the right blueprints for the universe, the right genes for life. So I believe I'm completely comfortable with the fundamental priority of God, the creator. And by the way, he wants us to understand this. He asks us to celebrate this. He did not do this to be secret. And part of his will is for us to explore through science. And now I'm back to the 17, 1800 scientists who thought they were reading the thoughts of God. And I think that's what he wants us to do. Celebrate what he's accomplished and be grateful for this moment on this beautiful earth. So I put God first. And we're way down a tremendous amount of time. That's always controversial. How old is the universe? How old is earth? But let's just say that God planned it and it followed out his plan. And we're at an exciting moment in that plan because we can understand how we use DNA. We can understand how precious this earth is. It's rare and it's privileged. Who knows if there's another earth in the universe? So we are a magic moment when I think God says, hey, look at me, look what I did. And I thought, do you have a relationship with you? Dr. West, we thank you so much. We appreciate this amazing dialogue between science and faith. We would like to continue this discussion in our next episode. We thank you so much for your time and we'll be back next time. Good to know. Thank you. Enjoy being with you. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at sfbay.epochtimes.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.