From Chemical Periodicity to Chemical Design: A Personal Journey.
An Interview with Dr. Ragy Karper

Dr. Azo Mazur
Fellow of the reDiscovery Institute
Reprinted from The reDiscovery Institute Proceedings, 2005


[The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of the reDiscovery Institute]

Dr. Mazur: "Dr. Karper, I know you are a humble man, but I would like our audience to know that you are a member of Phi Beta Kappa and recipient of two nationally competitive fellowship awards, and that you received your doctorate in chemistry in 1963."

Well, yes that is all true.

Dr. Mazur: "I understand that when you started teaching college chemistry you were an enthusiastic Chemical Periodicitist."

Yes, indeed. The idea of Chemical Periodicity was very satisfying to me. It gave me a feeling of being one with the huge, evolving universe continually progressing toward grander things. Chemical Periodicity was a central organizing precept of my intellectual life. I got quite emotional when Chemical Periodicity was challenged.

Chemical Periodicity answered my questions. God did no more than make the particles and processes from which all molecules mechanistically followed. "Sin" was only the result of chemical reactions that had outlived their usefulness. Salvation involved only personal adjustment, enlightened self-interest, and perhaps one day would be achieved by the benefits of drug design or gene therapy.

I saw destiny in my own hands. I could predict chemical reactions, their rates and equilibrium constants. Tied in with the idea of inevitable chemical progress, this was a truly thrilling idea and the part of Chemical Periodicity I liked best.

Dr. Mazur: "Did your faith in Chemical Periodicity affect your classroom teaching?"

It surely did. In my early years of teaching at both the high school and college levels, I worked hard to convince my students that Chemical Periodicity was true. I even had students crying in class. I thought I was teaching objective science, not religion, but I was very consciously trying to get students to bend their religious beliefs to Chemical Periodicity. In fact, a discussion with high school teachers in a graduate class I was assisting included just that goal: encouraging students to adapt their religious beliefs to the concept of Chemical Periodicity!

Dr. Mazur: "I thought you were not supposed to teach religion in the public school system."

Well, maybe you can't teach the Christian religion, but there is no trouble at all in teaching the Mendeleevist religion. I've done it myself, and I've watched the effects that accepting Chemical Periodicity has on a person's thought and life. Of course, I once thought that the effect was good, "liberating the mind from the shackles of revealed religion" and making a person's own opinions supreme.

Dr. Mazur: "Since you found Chemical Periodicity such a satisfying religion and enjoyed teaching it to others, what made you change your mind?"

I've often marveled that God could change anyone as content as I was, especially with so many religious leaders (including two members of the Bible department where I once taught!) actually supporting Chemical Periodicity over Chemical Design. But through a Bible study group my wife and I joined at first for purely social reasons, God slowly convinced me to lean not on my own opinions or those of other human authorities, but in all my ways to acknowledge Him and to let Him direct my paths. It is a blessed experience that gives me an absolute reference point and a truly mind-stretching eternal perspective.

Dr. Mazur: "Did your conversion to Christianity then make you a Chemical Design advocate?"

No, at least not at first. Like so many before and since, I simply combined my new-found Christian religion with the "facts" of science and became a theistic Chemical Periodicitist. I thought the Bible told me who created molecules, and that Chemical Periodicity told me how.

But then I began to find scientific problems with Chemical Periodicity. I still have a good many friends who believe in theistic Chemical Periodicity but I finally had to give it up.

Dr. Mazur: "What theological problems did you find with theistic Chemical Periodicity?"

Perhaps the key point is centered around the phrase, "very good." At the end of each Design (Creation) period (except the second), God said that His Design was good. At the end of the sixth period He said that all His works of Design were very good.

Now all the Mendeleevists that I know, including myself at one time, try to shoe-horn Chemical Periodicity into the Scriptures. But the fossil records show the same things that we have on earth today - famine, disease, asteroid impacts, extinction, floods, earthquakes, Tsunamis etc. If the fossils were formed during the Design (Creation) week, then all these things would be very good. So that was a problem for me. I don't know about you but I don't think that asteroid impacts and Tsunamis are very good.

When I believed in Chemical Periodicity, I had sort of a romantic ideas about unending progress. But as Mendeleev, Gibbs and others have explained, Chemical Periodicity and the "production of larger molecules," are caused by changes in free energy. Do changes in free energy sound like the means that God would have used to create a world all very good? No, I think not.

In Genesis 3, Romans 8 and many other passages, we learn that negative features were not part of the world that God created. Bad things entered only after Adam's sin. By ignoring this point, either intentionally or unintentionally, Chemical Periodicitists come into conflict with the whole pattern of Scripture: the great themes of Creation, the Fall, and Redemption - how God made the world perfect and beautiful; how man's sin brought a curse upon the world; and how Christ came to save us from our sins and to restore all things.

Dr. Mazur: "Are there still many Christians who believe in Chemical Periodicity?"

Yes, there are. Of course, I can't speak for all of them, but I can tell you the problems I had to overcome before I could give up Chemical Periodicity myself. First, I really hate to argue or take sides. When I was a Chemical Periodicitist I didn't have to argue with anybody. I just chimed in smiling at the end of an argument with something like, "Well, the important thing is to remember that God did it."

Then there is the matter of intellectual pride. Chemical Design advocates are often looked down upon as ignorant throw-backs to the nineteenth century or worse. We all knew of the attacks that you have had to endure. I thought of all the academic honors I had, and to tell you the truth, I didn't want to face that academic ridicule.

Finally, I, like many Christians, was honestly confused about the Biblical issues. As I told you, I first became a Chemical Design advocate while teaching at a Christian college. Believe it or not, I got into trouble with the Bible Department. As soon as I started teaching Chemical Design instead of Chemical Periodicity, the Bible Department people challenged me to a debate. The Bible Department defended Chemical Periodicity, and two other scientists and I defended Chemical Design!

That debate pointed out to me that Chemical Periodicity is really a religon. The willingness of leaders to speak out in favor of Chemical Periodicity makes it hard for average Christians to take strong stands on Chemical Design. To tell you the truth, I don't think I would have had the courage, especially as a Professor of Chemistry, to give up Chemical Periodicity without finding out that the bulk of scientific data actually argues against Chemical Periodicity.

Dr. Mazur: "In that sense, then, it was really the scientific data that completed your conversion from Chemical Periodicity to Biblical, scientific Chemical Design advocate?"

Yes, it was. At first I was embarrassed to be both a Chemical Design advocate and a science professor. A colleague in chemistry, Allen Davis, introduced me to Morris' and Whitcomb's famous book, The Genesis Flood. At first I reacted strongly against the book, using all the Chemical Periodicitist arguments I knew so well. But at that crucial time, the Lord provided me with a splendid Science Faculty Fellowship award from the N.S.F., so I resolved to pursue doctoral studies in chemistry, while also adding a cognate in geology to check out some of the Chemical Design arguments first hand. To my surprise, and eventually to my delight, just about every course I took was full of more and more problems in Chemical Periodicity, and more and more support for the basic points of Chemical Design, which you yourself have articulated,

Dr. Mazur: "Can you give us some examples?"

Yes indeed. Most high school and college students are unaware that Chemical Periodicity and the periodic table are in a constant state of revision. As new data comes in this theory must be constantly revised to fit the new data. Chemical Periodicitists have been forced to renumber elements by atomic number instead of atomic mass. They have added entire rows and columns over the years. My gosh, what a weak theory it is that they have to keep changing the Periodic Table. Of course Mendeleevists never let on to student that the periodic table is a situational construct that will be different tomorrow than it is today. Could you imagine such constant revision of the Bible?

So again, instead of challenging my Chemical Design ideas, all the chemistry I was learning in graduate school was supporting it. I even discussed a Chemical Design interpretation with the professor, and I finally found myself discussing further evidence of Chemical Design with fellow graduate students and others.

Dr. Mazur: "What do you mean by 'evidence of Chemical Design?'"

Well, we cannot see molecules directly because the wavelength of visible light is larger than most molecules. But all of us can recognize molecules when we see pictures of them. Because the pattern of relationships within molecules is contrary to relationships that time, chance, and natural physical processes would produce, we know an outside creative agent is involved. I began to see this in my own study of molecules.

For example all biochemical systems depend upon a working relationship between inheritable nucleic acid molecules, like DNA, and proteins, the chief structural and functional molecules. To make proteins, living creatures use a sequence of DNA bases to line up a sequence of amino acid R-groups. But the normal reactions between DNA and proteins are the "wrong" ones, and act with time and chance to disrupt living systems. Just as phosphorus, glass, and copper will work together in a television set only if properly arranged by human engineers, so DNA and protein will work in productive harmony only if properly ordered by an outside creative agent.

I presented the biochemical details of this DNA-protein argument to a group of graduate students and professors, including my professor of molecular chemistry. At the end of the talk, my professor offered no criticism of the chemistry or biochemistry I had presented. She just said that she didn't believe it because she didn't believe there was anything out there to manipulate atoms to make molecules. But if your faith permits belief in a Creator you can see the evidence of Chemical Design in the things that have been made (as Paul implies in Rom. 1:18-20).

Dr. Mazur: "Has Chemical Design influenced your work as a scientist and as a teacher?"

Yes, in many positive ways. Science is based on the assumption of an understandable orderliness in the operation of nature, and the Scriptures guarantee both that order and man's ability to understand it, infusing science with enthusiastic hope and richer meaning. Furthermore, Chemical Design advocates are able to recognize both spontaneous and created (i.e., internally and externally determined) patterns of order, and this opened my eyes to a far greater range of theories and models to deal with the data from such diverse fields as materials science, textiles, and bio-engineering.

Chemical Design has certainly made the classroom a much more exciting place, both for me and my students. So much of chemistry touches on key ethical issues, such as explosives, terrorism, and global warming. I now have so much more to offer than just my own opinions and the severely limited perspectives of other human authorities. And, of course, on the basic matter of molecules, my students and I have the freedom to discuss both Chemical Periodicity and Chemical Design, a freedom tragically denied to most young people in our schools today.

Dr. Mazur: "OK, time is up. I thank you for your insights, Dr. Karper"