[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hi there. This is Jeff Simmons for id the future. I'm one of the fellows at Discovery Institute and your host. My guest today is David Galloway. Doctor Galloway, welcome to the show.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: Doctor Jeff very nice. Very nice to be here.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Yes, it's our pleasure for sure. Doctor Galloway is a surgeon based in the west of Scotland. He graduated in medicine from the University of Glasgow. His postgraduate specialist clinical training involved working.
[00:00:39] Speaker D: In hospitals in Glasgow, London and in New York City.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: His research work focused on different aspects of cancer and in particular he investigated the influence of various environmental and dietary factors on characteristics of cell division. He developed an academic surgical practice in Glasgow, focusing on surgical oncology and metabolic surgery. In 2014, he has provided intermittent surgical support to a mission hospital in a remote corner of Zambia.
[00:01:05] Speaker D: In 2015, he was elected to the.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Royal president, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, a post he's held since December 2018. He's authored numerous clinical and scientific papers and is a fellow of various international medical and surgical colleges, including the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Physicians, the Academy of Medicine of Malaysia, as well as medical surgical colleges in both India and Sri Lanka. He is married to Christine.
[00:01:33] Speaker D: They have two daughters and four grandchildren.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: He has written three books in the past three years. Design dissected followed science and controlled chaos. We'll be talking about design dissected today. Maybe a little bit overlapped. The latter book was an account of some incredible surgical adventures in rural Africa that would be controlled chaos. In his spare time, he's a keen golfer and avid reader of popular science, the philosophy of science and religion and current affairs. So that's a mouthful.
[00:02:01] Speaker D: And you have a lot of credentials.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: I could spend the rest of the day almost reading your credentials. I read your book totally once and parts second time. I find it very fascinating. I find it unique in several regards. How did you get interested in intelligent design?
[00:02:17] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good question. I reckon that goes back to my days as a student and when I went to university to study medicine. I was also very interested in what was happening in the kind of popular science scene and was a regular reader of Scientific American. And you maybe remember those days, Geoff, you're a sort of vintage that you might remember back to the seventies.
[00:02:39] Speaker D: I don't remember last week.
[00:02:43] Speaker C: Well, back in the seventies, there was.
[00:02:45] Speaker E: A load of stuff appearing in Scientific.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: American and in other journals that just spoke about the kind of current thinking on evolutionary biology.
[00:02:55] Speaker E: And the thing that struck me was.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: That it just seemed that mutations and natural selection the kind of modern synthesis.
[00:03:04] Speaker E: Was the accepted paradigm. The curious thing for me was that.
[00:03:08] Speaker C: It seemed, and this was acknowledged by people like Dobzhansky and Mayer and others who were writing at that time, that the problem with mutations was that they were almost always deleterious, they almost always damaged the genome. And of course, that's been borne out much more in recent times.
[00:03:28] Speaker E: So I just had a real struggle.
[00:03:30] Speaker C: Trying to figure out how you could advance the complexity and diversity of life.
[00:03:35] Speaker E: The gain of function that would be.
[00:03:36] Speaker C: Required, the modification and body plan and so on, when in fact there was so much damage being done to the genome. And so it just didn't quite square. And so from that point, I began.
[00:03:45] Speaker E: To read more regularly.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: I think the connection with the design hypothesis came with Mike Behey's book in.
[00:03:52] Speaker E: The mid nineties when he wrote Darwin's black box.
[00:03:55] Speaker C: That was almost that kind of a light coming on in my mind when I began to see a completely different approach to the theory of standard, accepted, asserted theory of evolution at that time.
[00:04:10] Speaker D: Yeah, the story is similar to mine.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Not identical, of course. So why did you feel you wanted.
[00:04:17] Speaker D: To write this book?
[00:04:18] Speaker B: What prompted you to do that?
[00:04:20] Speaker C: Okay, so a couple of things lay behind the book.
[00:04:24] Speaker E: When I was president of the Royal College, which is one of the ancient royal colleges, goes back to 1599, in.
[00:04:29] Speaker C: Fact, when it was founded.
[00:04:31] Speaker E: One of the senior fellows in the college said to me, you know, when.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: The president deem its office, it's traditional for him to give a lecture. So I said, well, what should the lecture be about? And the indication was, well, you can choose whatever you like. And so rather than choosing a clinical.
[00:04:48] Speaker E: Topic or something from my surgical practice.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: I just was very tempted to.
[00:04:53] Speaker E: To offer a real challenge to the.
[00:04:55] Speaker C: Idea that all of life and all.
[00:04:58] Speaker E: Of biology was essentially just the result.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Of random processes, natural law and so on. And I just did not quite buy.
[00:05:08] Speaker E: That as an acceptable explanation. And I wanted just to expose some of the arguments, and these are the.
[00:05:13] Speaker C: Arguments that lie behind the support for a design hypothesis. So that was the sort of starting point. And when I gave that lecture, various people, including John Lennox, whom you maybe know and have come across, they heard the lecture and they said, you know.
[00:05:30] Speaker E: You should really write this up. You should expand it, write it up as a book.
[00:05:33] Speaker C: And that was the genesis of the book design dissected that we've been thinking about tonight.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Obviously, you've had training, or you've learned.
[00:05:43] Speaker D: How to deal with fallacies of logic and how to go through research correctly and how to interpret them correctly, because.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: It'S a whole section of your book.
[00:05:53] Speaker D: That talks about the fallacies of logic within these theories. How does one dissect a theory?
[00:06:00] Speaker B: You and I are both doctors.
[00:06:01] Speaker D: I know how to dissect a frog, etcetera.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: But how do you dissect theory?
[00:06:07] Speaker C: Yeah, well, of course, dissection, the reason.
[00:06:10] Speaker E: I chose the title is quite simple.
[00:06:11] Speaker C: You know, the process of dissection.
[00:06:13] Speaker E: And you'll remember this from medical school.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Too, I'm quite sure, involves the process of cutting apart something. But the key thing about dissection is it should be a methodical process.
[00:06:25] Speaker E: It allows you to analyze the structure.
[00:06:27] Speaker C: Of something in some detail. And so that's what I wanted to do with the whole concept of design and biology.
[00:06:34] Speaker E: I wanted to try and analyze it.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: Methodically, and just to try and pick the pieces apart and understand why people come to believe certain things about science in general and about anatomy and physiology in particular. And these are the sort of, these.
[00:06:49] Speaker E: Have been the focus points that I've.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Chosen in the book, just to use as examples to support the idea that design is not an illusion, but the design does appear to be genuine and real.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: So these arguments, though, you lay out.
[00:07:05] Speaker D: And explain deduction, induction, abduction, circular arguments, along that line.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: It reminded me a little bit of.
[00:07:12] Speaker D: My first class of philosophy in college. Brought back some difficult memories, actually. It was a tough class. So what do you think about the.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Arguments that are pro Darwin? Do they have any support?
[00:07:26] Speaker C: Well, I mean, they clearly have huge support. I mean, even now, despite the fact that many card carrying biologists would have.
[00:07:36] Speaker E: Serious concerns about the ability of the kind of standard darwinian idea to support the kind of data that we now have. In fact, I think a reference in.
[00:07:47] Speaker C: The book, the famous, now famous conference.
[00:07:50] Speaker E: That was held at the end of 2016 in the Royal Society in London.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: Where the conference was actually called new.
[00:07:55] Speaker E: Trends in evolutionary biology.
[00:07:57] Speaker C: And the concern was that so many of the observed mechanisms active now in evolutionary biology are very distinct from the kind of standard, limited effect that can be achieved from standard mutation and natural selection. And so it looks as though there are lots of other factors which come into play, and, of course, there are many mechanisms. The interesting thing for me is this, that despite that, there is still a kind of avowed determination to resist any idea that design might be genuine. Any design in biology is something which.
[00:08:39] Speaker E: Is seen to be an illusion.
[00:08:42] Speaker C: And I have tried to argue that.
[00:08:43] Speaker E: When you dissect the whole thing apart, actually, you have to draw the conclusion.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: That the design is real and is not illusory and even when you get.
[00:08:53] Speaker E: Into trying to make some kind of.
[00:08:55] Speaker C: Sense of the layers of information within the human genome, for example, where you have frame shifts and you have the.
[00:09:03] Speaker E: Possibility of gene transfer and all of.
[00:09:06] Speaker C: This, it just seems to point to an even more detailed level of additional design beyond the design that's seen in.
[00:09:15] Speaker E: The genetic code itself.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: So the whole thing just seems to me to be an argument that the naturalist is unable to win because naturalism just doesn't quite get to an adequate explanation for what we observe.
[00:09:33] Speaker D: Yeah, I think personally, and I see it in your book as well, Darwin's.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Theory is pseudoscience at the best. I don't know if the word science should even be used.
[00:09:44] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: I also find things to be too coincidental to be a coincidence.
[00:09:48] Speaker D: It's a famous quote from a baseball player who has a lot of funny.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Quotes, but this one really works. Why do you think there's so much.
[00:09:55] Speaker D: Difficulty convincing people that this old theory should be thrown out or discarded, or at least selectively discarded?
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Why are people so resistant?
[00:10:05] Speaker E: Well, people are resistant because of the implications of invoking a designer.
[00:10:11] Speaker C: If there is design, and if the.
[00:10:13] Speaker E: Design is real, then inevitably it points.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: To some kind of agent, causation, it.
[00:10:19] Speaker E: Points to a designer, and that is where the sticking point is.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: And there are many, many examples of card carrying scientists who have recognized that there is evidence of teleology, if you.
[00:10:34] Speaker E: Will, purpose or intentionality?
[00:10:36] Speaker C: Purpose in the. In the kind of systems that we.
[00:10:40] Speaker E: See in biological systems.
But they're very reluctant to accept that.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Because if you accept that there's a.
[00:10:46] Speaker E: Designer, it just brings it out of the naturalistic realm.
[00:10:49] Speaker C: And that's where people begin to feel very uncomfortable, because inevitably there are metaphysical implications, or even religious implications pointing to a designer of the universe, which is beyond anything that you can simply analyze.
[00:11:05] Speaker E: And measure in a lab. So that's why people are very antagonistic towards this.
[00:11:10] Speaker C: It just gets out of their comfort zone.
[00:11:12] Speaker D: Yeah, God or there isn't a God almost boils down to that. And yeah, it's connected to that. A lot of issues basically come down to, is it God or not God related.
Didn't you talk about science being originally religious?
It was a God thing. Scientists were God loving, God following.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Well, they were back in the 16th century and on, I mean, even into the 19th century, some of the most impressive scientific names, you know, including people.
[00:11:46] Speaker E: Like Copernicus or Kepler or Galileo, for example, or on into the 19th century.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: Where you've got figures like Lister and Clark Maxwell and so on, even Newton, you know, all of these individuals were theists in some form or another. They may not have been card carrying.
[00:12:06] Speaker E: Christian theists, all of them.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: But the theistic view, the idea that.
[00:12:11] Speaker E: There was a God behind the universe, was certainly commonplace and well supported.
[00:12:15] Speaker D: I like your discussion of Semmelweis, how bad ideas persist. No matter what, we'll fight for the bad ideas. Can you elaborate a little bit on Semmelweis?
[00:12:26] Speaker C: Yes. Poor Semmelweis.
[00:12:28] Speaker E: He was an interesting character.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: This was back in Vienna. He was, of course, Hungarian.
[00:12:34] Speaker E: He was a doctor who was appointed.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: To the Vienna General Hospital in the.
[00:12:38] Speaker E: Mid part of the 19th century.
[00:12:40] Speaker C: And what Semmelweis discovered when he went to Vienna was that there was a huge maternal mortality. Young women giving birth in part of.
[00:12:50] Speaker E: The hospital in which he was appointed as an assistant physician. I mean, the death rate was something like 30% for women in childbirth. And they were dying of sepsis. They were dying of childbed fever or puerperal sepsis.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: And so he was interested in this, and he did the kind of standard thing.
[00:13:05] Speaker E: He had a look at the data.
[00:13:07] Speaker C: Which went back to 1823, and the peak death rate came in the early 1840s. And Semmelweis had a look and immediately.
[00:13:17] Speaker E: Identified that there were two areas within the hospital, one with a high mortality, one with a very acceptable low mortality.
[00:13:24] Speaker C: At about a 10th of the high mortality area. So 3% versus 30%. And what he realized was that the medical students and the doctors were the ones.
[00:13:35] Speaker E: They were the staff who were associated with the high mortality cases.
[00:13:39] Speaker C: And when he then began to look.
[00:13:41] Speaker E: In a little bit more detail, he.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: Realized that this all started when the medical student started attending post mortem examinations, attending autopsies, participating in the autopsies, and so on. And what he then did was he had the two groups change places, just as a kind of a.
[00:14:00] Speaker E: Not quite a randomized clinical trial, but.
[00:14:02] Speaker C: A clinical trial nevertheless. And exactly what you might anticipate with hindsight happened again. The high mortality was associated with the.
[00:14:12] Speaker E: Medical staff and the low mortality with the midwifery pupils.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: And so he then realized there was.
[00:14:18] Speaker E: Something to do with the post mortem room.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: And he started insisting that the staff.
[00:14:22] Speaker E: Indulge in hand hygiene.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: He made them wash their hands in.
[00:14:26] Speaker E: Chlorinated water when they came back from the post mortem room. And, of course, the effect of that was legendary.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: The mortality rate dropped to the same level as it was in the other area. And so this was a fantastic observation, but it was not welcomed. I mean, even famous contemporary physicians and surgeons of his day thought this was a crazy idea and he just did not accept it.
[00:14:52] Speaker E: And poor Semmelweis ended up in a.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: Mental institution because he was so vindictive.
[00:14:57] Speaker E: Towards those that didn't accept his observations that he just couldn't handle it and ended up turning to drink. And eventually he tragically died of sepsis himself, which was interesting, as did one.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: Of his academic colleagues. I've told the whole story in the book.
[00:15:13] Speaker E: That's an abridged version, but it's fascinating.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: But the Semmelweis effect is interesting because, you know, again and again, we find it before that with Copernicus, with Kepler. We find it with Lister. They make accurate observations. They are proved by the fullness of.
[00:15:29] Speaker E: Time to be correct, but they are shunned by the scientific community. And I get the sense that the design proponents are finding themselves in a similar situation.
[00:15:39] Speaker C: The evidence points to design. People are shunning that because they don't like the idea. It's not the paradigm they're used to.
[00:15:45] Speaker E: And so they want somehow just to disregard it.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: And that's, I think, the problem that we face these days.
[00:15:51] Speaker D: That's great, great synopsis, and there are a lot of examples in the book. What I would like to do is break this interview into two parts, and we're going to talk, I think, a lot more about medicine related and darwin.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: And intelligent design in the second half. If I can list your four problems.
[00:16:09] Speaker D: With Darwin in your book, and you discuss these at length.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: So we'll be talking about this a little bit.
[00:16:13] Speaker D: But problems have to do with origin of life, fossil record, irreducible complexity, and information systems, and I might add, myself, foresight. And we'll go into that and it'll be more medical, and that would be a little unique, I think, for us. So thanks for this half, and we'll be back in a short time.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Visit
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