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With David Galloway
74 Plays3 years ago
What happens when the dreaded "God and science" topic comes up when you're speaking about Jesus? Today's guest reassures us that most people who assume that science explains away the need for God, are only merely assuming it. He encourages us to dig deeper and points us towards some resources that will help give us confidence if the subject arises.
David Galloway is a gastroenterological surgeon, formerly President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow. He has worked in Zambia, Malaysia and the USA. He is currently President of the Centre for Intelligent Design, speaking regularly on issues of faith, medicine and science. His latest books are Design Dissected and Follow the Science co-authored with Alistair Noble.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome back for another week of PepTalk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Kristy and I'm joined with Andy Bannister. Andy, how are you doing? It's great to be with you. As always, Kristy, the sun is shining in Scotland. It's a good day. What's not to like? Well, the sun is indeed shining in this studio because we're joined by the wonderful David Galloway. David, hello, welcome. Hi, nice to see you. Nice to be with you.
David Galloway's Career Journey
00:00:36
Speaker
Thanks so much for joining us this morning, David. You have quite the resume, I have to say. Reading your bio right now, I can see that you were a consultant, or you are a consultant surgeon, and you're currently an honorary professor of surgery at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Amazing. What kind of surgery are you involved with? Okay, so my training was in general surgery, which was
00:01:01
Speaker
something which involved a little bit of everything. So during my training years, I rotated around the various specialties. But as I got towards the end of my training, I began to focus more and more on cancer surgery. So I became a surgical oncologist and really restricted much of my activity in the NHS to abdominal surgery.
00:01:21
Speaker
So surgical gastroenterology was the specialty. But, you know, we had to deal with whatever came through the door. So it meant dealing with trauma in its various forms and so on. And more recently, I had the opportunity of working in Africa, which just fails to recognize any kind of specialty boundary. And so you just have to deal with literally everything. So that was a fantastic professional as well as personal experience.
00:01:45
Speaker
The other string to your bow, David, and one of the reasons why you're on pep talk is you're also known as someone who, although you are an eminent medic, but is also very committed to Christian.
Valedictory Lecture on Science and Faith
00:01:58
Speaker
And I know those two worlds have sometimes come together in interesting ways. And I'd love us to get into that conversation by you telling listeners the story of you were for some time president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow.
00:02:11
Speaker
And when that came to an end and they had the opportunity as presidents do to do a sort of farewell kind of valedictory lecture, you did something a little bit unusual as you departed that famous institution. Tell us what happened.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, well, that was an interesting opportunity in many ways because I have long been interested in some of the so-called science-faith debate. I think it's perhaps not well represented by that particular terminology, but nevertheless, I did think that it would be a wonderful
00:02:42
Speaker
goad to the naturalist community, which seems to occupy the default position in the scientific world. I thought it'd be great just to kind of noise them up a little bit. And so when I was invited to give this kind of valedictory lecture, I decided that that's exactly what I was going to do. I was going to get into probing some of the assumptions and assertions that are widely held
00:03:06
Speaker
in the scientific community. And so they were pushing me hard for a title for this lecture. And so I decided to keep it as obscure as possible. And despite having the amazing score of 31% in my most recent Latin examination, which was a lifetime ago, I chose the title enigmatic ad infinitum, just to keep the whole thing as mysterious as possible. So they set it up and we had an audience and we keep it from there.
00:03:36
Speaker
Oh, you've absolutely left us on a cliffhanger. What did you say in this speech, David?
Limitations of Science
00:03:42
Speaker
I really just began to probe the kind of questions which are unanswered. You know, I wanted really to get to some of the issues of ultimate reality, the kind of things that always draw an audience. And I know that you and Andy have both spoken about some of these issues before, but it reminded me of a famous biologist, Peter Medawar, so from a previous generation, but a man actually who was linked to
00:04:08
Speaker
the institution that I was involved with in the University of Glasgow, Medawar was very involved in the early days of sorting out the details of the immune response and so was the mind behind much of transplantation immunology but he also spoke and wrote actually a little book about the limitations of science and he said you know what science can't really deal with are the questions of a child you know the
00:04:33
Speaker
the where do we come from and the what are we here for question. So from a Christian worldview, I was very keen to get into that, not by applying any kind of biblical thinking, but simply to look at the scientific evidence and to ask people to think again about the conclusions and the assumptions that they have drawn.
00:04:55
Speaker
There's so many things that we could say as we explore this, but one of the things I find fascinating right away, David, is one of the things we love doing at Solas is helping equip people to be open about their faith at work.
Faith in the Workplace
00:05:07
Speaker
And I love the fact that you didn't run away
00:05:11
Speaker
Now, obviously, that was your valedictory lecture. Up until that point, had you kind of kept your faith under a bowl? Had you hidden away your Christian faith or had you always been somebody there in the workplace who'd been open about your faith in Christ? Yeah, I'd have to say I was never someone who was an out-note Bible-thumper, you know, quoting scripture and so on.
00:05:32
Speaker
I've always been active. I've always been keen to be involved in evangelism in some form. And so the way that I tackled that in the professional realm was that I put together a website and on my website, I was very open about my worldview position, about my Christian faith and so on. And that actually led to lots of opportunities, as you might imagine, because, you know, I think that the situation in the wider public and certainly the situation either willfully or not in the
00:06:02
Speaker
scientific or medical community. The situation is that people kind of assume that there is a basic understanding that just takes out the need for anyone to think about God.
00:06:16
Speaker
or about the Christian message. And I think it's important to challenge that. So, for example, I used to work with one of my anaesthetic colleagues. Now, anaesthetists and surgeons work closely together, as you can imagine. And this individual was someone who had been brought up as a Christian, but had really just swerved away from his faith thinking that
00:06:40
Speaker
that naturalism and Darwinian evolution and all of that was more than enough to explain the details of life's background. And so we used to have regular conversations, and he would just commonly assert that he was an atheist. And as soon as someone says that, it seems to me you need to be in there right away and just challenge that idea.
Engaging Faith Discussions
00:07:01
Speaker
You don't need to be aggressive about it. You don't need to be impolite about it just to get them to say, well, why? Why do you hold that view?
00:07:10
Speaker
the opportunity of displaying the proof that they have for the claims that they make. And so that's a way of really entering into discussion with people without being cringe worthy, without being in any sense embarrassing. It just seems like a natural way to allow a conversation to develop. That's such a natural way into the conversation, David. Thank you. And I imagine that there are quite a few of our listeners who
00:07:36
Speaker
are committed Christians who love the Lord and are in all sorts of different workplaces and spaces and environments. Do you have any advice as to how they can
00:07:48
Speaker
go about having those conversations. I mean, what does it look like for you as a Christian in particular in the sciences? What kind of challenges have you faced as well as those kind of conversations that you've engaged with? Well, I think one has to be credible in whatever professional field you're in. And so I think if you begin to make bold assertions and claims which cannot really be substantiated
00:08:14
Speaker
then you're immediately on a very shaky foundation. And so it seemed to me that having a measure of credibility, and I think anyone who gets involved in discussions of this nature, they really have to do some of the hard yards in preparing their minds so that they're ready to engage the kind of objections that people will make. So they're a really popular
00:08:39
Speaker
writers and speakers out there in the world who are absolutely on song and determined to get their materialist worldview across. And it's important I think to understand the arguments and to be ready to engage those arguments.
00:08:55
Speaker
rather than just feel as many Christians I think do, they feel as if they're on the back foot, they feel as if the battle has already been lost and they don't have really anything to bring to the table. Nothing actually, when you look at the evidence in detail, nothing could be further from the truth.
00:09:12
Speaker
Well, let's pick up on that idea, David, for a minute or two. Because I think one of the issues I sometimes run across is I hear Christians say, well, it's OK for you, for you, David. You're professional. You're scientifically trained. And it's OK for you, Andy and Christi. You're professional apologists. You can spend the time. But my life is so busy with work and family and everything. I don't know the time to become an expert in these things. So I can't possibly talk about this stuff
00:09:42
Speaker
with my colleagues. And so I think a lot of Christians feel overwhelmed by what they feel is the size of the mountain to climb, to be able to talk to their friends about their faith if they're going to get science and faith or evolution thrown at them. How do people begin? How does someone who's not a specialist, who's not a professional scientist, not a professional apologist, how do they begin getting into this topic in a way they can feel comfortable and talk about their faith at university or work and not need to worry if the science question is thrown at them?
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think there are lots of ways of doing that. It's a really good point, actually. And people do sometimes feel outgunned and overwhelmed by the opposition that they fear that they may face. I think one important thing is simply to ask questions, Andy, to be honest. You know, to ask people to give them a sense of the burden of proof. If someone's making a claim, you know, you can be quite simple and straightforward and just ask for
00:10:39
Speaker
some evidence to back up the claim that they're making. And you can be winsome, you can be non-argumentative about it, but simply seek information. And I found, again and again, when someone might give you the throwaway line, you know, well, I'm not for all this God talk or I'm an atheist or, you know, that
00:10:59
Speaker
the sort of naturalist worldview has explained everything, I would always just get right in there. You don't need any background knowledge, just open the conversation, get yourself some information about where they're coming from. And you know what I've often found? I almost always have found that when you begin to probe someone who makes a claim like that, and you ask them for the evidence behind their claim,
00:11:23
Speaker
Very frequently, there's not much, if anything, there to back it up. And people will then become inclined to change the subject. But that should give you an opportunity to at least understand where people are coming from. And there are many, many resources now available, not at the high-powered level, but at the simple, straightforward level, as you know, which are available for people who are non-specialists to engage this intelligent conversation.
00:11:52
Speaker
Which is perhaps a good note to mention that you've written one book and there's another just out. What are the two books that particularly that you've been involved in this, David, and how can they help people?
Books Challenging Naturalist Views
00:12:05
Speaker
Well, the first one that I wrote is actually the one that's going to be last to appear. But on the basis of that lecture I referred to in the Royal College, a number of people approached me afterwards and said that they'd never heard anything quite like that before. I mean, I chose a lot of examples from medicine and surgery and physiology and biochemistry and so on, things which
00:12:25
Speaker
you don't often read about or maybe ever read about in the design literature and so I selected some of these and people were kind of taken by these examples and encouraged me to write them up. So I spent a bit of time preparing a book which is just about to appear. It's called Design Dissected and it basically challenges the naturalist worldview and shows that there are various parts of
00:12:51
Speaker
the naturalist assumption of which just do not bear the weight that people wanted to bear. So things like, you know, how can you explain the origin of life or how can you explain the origin of biological information or what about molecular machinery or what about the holes in the fossil record, all that sort of thing. So I've touched on some of these. And then during the course of the last year, while we've all been struggling with this SARS-CoV-2 pandemic,
00:13:18
Speaker
We kept on hearing the same mantra from our political masters. You must have noticed this. You know, they were always saying to justify their public policy restrictions and decisions. You know, they're following the science. And we heard this so often that a colleague of mine, Alastair Noble, Alastair's a PhD chemist and was involved in education, science education for most of his career.
00:13:41
Speaker
and he and I were talking about this and we were just so frustrated about this following the science because we realized and the public soon realized that the science wasn't some monolithic authority because you know the science the evidence and its interpretation could pretty much be bent
00:13:58
Speaker
by the philosophical presuppositions or political presuppositions in order to produce whatever policy decision the politicians wanted to follow. And it seemed to us that that was very similar, parallel, in fact, to the public perception about the role of science in the wider world, you know? There was this idea that if you follow the science, it takes you to an explanation of life, or it takes you to an explanation of consciousness, for example. And in reality, when you follow the science,
00:14:27
Speaker
you find there are more questions than answers. And actually, there is maybe the inference to a better explanation if you simply begin to unpack that in a little more detail. So we wrote this little book, Follow the Science, but be wary where it leads. And that's available now for people to get. And it's written at a popular level, I think. It's not high powered. It's not super technical. It should be accessible to pretty much everyone. Sounds like a brilliant book, David. Where can we get a hold of that when it comes out?
00:14:57
Speaker
Well, it's on Amazon if you simply, if you just get into Amazon or any of the good e-book suppliers, it's available as an e-book. It's available in print, paperback, and Kindle edition. And designed as entity will also be available on Amazon soon. It's currently available from the publisher, who's John Ritchie Publications. They're based in the west of Scotland. And on their website, you can get both of these titles and of course, through other outlets as well.
00:15:28
Speaker
Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. I look forward to delving into that. You mentioned earlier on that you worked in oncology for a fair while. I wonder, are there any stories that you might be able to share with us of how you've, if you've had opportunities to share Christ with patients who are going through some of the worst days that they'll ever face as you've met them and cared for them and treated them through awful cancer?
Faith in Patient Care
00:15:57
Speaker
It's a really good question, Christy, and one which I know that many healthcare people struggle a little bit with because they're aware of a kind of invisible boundary between
00:16:07
Speaker
what their professional duty and responsibility is and what they might be able to say from a personal point of view. And so I can think, I mean, I can think of many, many examples of patients who have been quite willing to be open and have a frank conversation, often at times in their life when they feel most vulnerable and most threatened. And far from taking advantage of that, I think they are quite frequently wide open to having a conversation.
00:16:35
Speaker
And often what I would do is I would simply say to them, you know, ideally on a sort of one-to-one basis rather than a ward-round setting or whatever with a load of people around, just have an opportunity to ask whether or not they have any personal faith on which they lean when they feel, you know, under threat from an illness like this or when they're facing a major surgical procedure. And lots of opportunities. In fact, I can remember the very first patient
00:17:04
Speaker
And this goes back to, you know, this goes back to the late summer of 1977, probably before you guys were around. Anyway, maybe not Andy, I think he's here. But I can remember the end. I won't say a word. Not often you find that's the response from Andy Mannister that he won't say a word, but there you go. Anyway, this was a particular patient who was a young woman
00:17:34
Speaker
who was dying of malignant melanoma. And she was just scared stiff. And it was a great opportunity just to come alongside her. And the one thing that people are looking for, you know, is hope. And I think if you can share from your own personal experience and your own personal worldview position, your Christian faith, that there is indeed hope to be found, then I think people are open to hear about that and to explore further.
00:18:04
Speaker
That sort of connects quite nicely. Partly answers, but it'd be great in our last couple of minutes just to dig a little deeper.
Connecting Science to Christ
00:18:12
Speaker
Dave, one thing I wanted to ask you is that one of the things I always try and do whenever I'm talking to someone who's not a Christian and issues or questions come up, I'm always keen to try and find a way to connect the issue or the question to Jesus, you know, not just give a sort of intellectual kind of answer and leave it there, but we want to connect it to Christ and the gospel.
00:18:27
Speaker
And I confess I sometimes struggle with science. Sometimes I find, you know, because I've read a lot around the issues, okay, I can answer the scientific objection, but then sometimes I have to work quite hard to make the bridge to Jesus himself. How are some of the ways that you found a bridge in that gap that perhaps someone raises a scientific issue or question? How do you go about both answering it, but then actually connecting it to your hope? Okay, so that really just
00:18:55
Speaker
is where you have to just make the connection between the sort of argument and the background. And if you can deal with at least some kind of credible answers to the kind of objections or concerns that you might have there.
00:19:09
Speaker
it then allows you to bring in a personal story. And I think there is no easy intellectual bridge from the reality of truth or the reality of aspects of the science-faith debate into a sort of Christian evangelism position. But this is where your personal experience comes in and your personal mindset comes in. So if you can then
00:19:31
Speaker
just describe what your own thinking is on the matter. And so, for example, I find a very good way to do that is, again, to look at an evidence-based connection to the Lord Jesus, and that is usually with some reference to the resurrection, because it's something which people are instantly interested in. It's something which, if it's right, provides genuine hope.
00:19:53
Speaker
And of course, there's a very good evidence base for it and certainly a good way to have the conversation with people. And of course, we know that if that's not right, the whole of the Christian edifice just crumbles away. And so it's absolutely central. And I think it's a good way of connecting people to the notion that Christ is real and that Christ is a personal source of hope, the way, the truth and the life.
00:20:19
Speaker
That's brilliant, David. And I think a very good place to kind of bring the conversation to
Episode Summary and Farewell
00:20:25
Speaker
an end. We've packed a lot into 20 minutes. Thank you for so much of what you've shared. And I highly recommend to listeners to do go and check David's books out for the science and design dissected. We'll put links to both those books in the show notes for this podcast. But David, thank you so much for taking time to be with us today.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's been a great player. Well, thank you both very much and keep doing what you're doing. It's really good. And to all of you listening at home or at the gym or in the car or wherever else you get your podcasts, Christian and I have enjoyed being with you as ever and we will see you, speak to you again in another two weeks time on another episode of Pep Talk. So do join us again in two weeks time for another guest. Bye for now. See you soon.