this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 34 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I haven't forgotten Destin trying to push his creationist agenda using his YouTube platform. He makes a lot of good content, but after that I don't want to watch his stuff anymore. Fuck him for doing something like that.

[–] flubba86@lemmy.world 28 points 3 days ago (5 children)

He is also a staunch Republican, and a Trump supporter. I like some of his videos, but most of them are cringe if you're actually knowledgeable about the topic he is covering. He researches a topic just enough to come across as the smartest person in the room, while dumbing down concepts and talking down to the audience like we're infants. You can tell his target audience are poorly educated and easily impressed people from rural America.

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In the video where he's shooting antique guns (or something) with his son, his son always calls him "sir". Is that a regional thing? It seemed super weird to me.

[–] flubba86@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I noticed the same thing, and you could see it a bit in this (OP) video too.

I think this one is partly regional and partly traditional.

Destin probably always called his father sir, and he probably has the same expectation of his children.

[–] ooo@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I watched this video in its entirety and it made me profoundly uncomfortable.

There was a lot of subtext that seems edited out. Yes he’s “humble” in some respects but he’s also willfully ignorant in others, or at least presents as such.

I would not be surprised if in a few years he goes off the deep end.

[–] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I also watched the whole thing, and have to imagine that a lot of xenophobic stuff was edited out when they found out their chainmail from India was actually from China. That section was so cringe, they had someone on earlier who spoke Chinese, why not ask him what it meant or research some more, than make assumptions and air that lightly filtered.

I get he's making a point to invest in local manufacturing, but then knowingly having the excess supply of chainmail come from India defeats the point he's trying to make. Considering the handle for the first 2000 are from costa rica and the excess chainmail after the 2000 units was at least thought to be from India, it seems rare anything being sold is 100% Made in America, yet has a price tag 4x as much.

[–] immutable@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

Yea I watched it too and had the exact same response to the Indian chainmail.

He wants to make his product completely in America. Ok sure. He can’t. Ok sucks. Decides he’s actually just trying not to buy any Chinese components instead.. ok what?

The other bit I thought that was kinda weird was that if he’s so interested in bringing back this manufacturing capacity to Americans, then, do that.

It’s an entire video about him trying to manufacture something without manufacturing it. Outsourcing every single component to a vendor as long as it’s an American vendor.

You want more people that know how to make tools and dies, hire some dude to do that, make it economically feasible for people to do that by having good stable jobs that do that at your brush factory.

I found the whole video kinda offputting in this way. It sure would be great if he could just magically find this manufacturing capacity sitting idle in America and exploit it to make his brush.

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I pretty strongly disagree with that characterization, at least for the manufacturing videos I watched, that I do have experience in. I appreciate how deferential and humble he is to people in his videos even if they're showing a job that is relatively unremarkable to most people.

I also think

poorly educated and easily impressed people from rural America.

is a pretty mean spirited and stereotype-based thing to say.

[–] Venator@lemmy.nz -3 points 3 days ago

poorly educated and easily impressed people from rural America.

is a pretty mean spirited and stereotype-based thing to say.

Also his target audience is anyone poorly educated and easily impressed regardless of where they're from. 😅

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Really ? he is a Trump supporter ? I know him only from his videos, but that seems out of character for someone versed in the sciences and reasoning. Can you provide a source ? I don't want to support him with views anymore if that's true

[–] nieminen@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

This. I'd be super surprised because he's an intellectual who likes to understand the hows and whys of things. I really enjoy his content (especially his helicopter series). If he's maga then I'll definitely not watch another.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago

Oh, I casually watched his videos and I could tolerate 1 or 2 of these stances but all 3, yeah if that's true it's time to unsubscribe

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've been following him for years and I don't really remember him pushing any narrative except the bible verse references at the end, can you be more specific?

It's obvious he's religious but he's a great educator and host so unless it's affecting his videos, I don't care what he does with his free time.

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've responded with a link in another reply in this thread.

[–] Venator@lemmy.nz 7 points 3 days ago

C can you link to that reply?

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (3 children)

When did he do that?

And, if someone has a sincerely held moral belief and they honestly believe other people's lives would be made better if they heard it, then how is is not morally good from their perspective?

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 17 points 3 days ago (3 children)

He can believe what he wants in his personal time. He can even use his platform to spread his beliefs. However being all about science and then pushing some weird agenda is a whole other thing. He betrayed the trust, so I choose not to watch his stuff anymore.

It was this video: https://youtu.be/VPSm9gJkPxU

When this video went up it caused quite a fuss online as Destin seems to heavily push an old debunked intelligent design narrative around flagella.

[–] HiddenLychee@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I'm curious to see the creationist stuff but I'll be honest, I don't want to listen to him for a half hour. Is there a time stamp I can skip to?

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

He literally says that there's a lot of good research being done trying to find the evolutionary mechanism. Nowhere that I saw at least did he push creationism, other than mentioning that the concept exists, and that he believes in god.

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Well, I don't think it's worth repeating the debate again. You can go back and look at what was posted back when it came out.

But he tells a very one sided story and keeps telling to keep an open mind. He presents this thing as if it's totally unique and amazing, where there are very similar structures in nature out there. He also heavily focuses on the idea of it being a motor in the way that a human designed motor works, giving the same names to parts which are kind of similar on a surface level but really aren't. He also repeats all of the bible thumper talking points around this subject, as if it's a mystery nobody can explain and couldn't have come to be without some kind of intelligent design at the helm. But the reality is, this is not representing the reality at all. This whole flagella thing was an exercise of goal post moving in the first place. The ID people kept pointing out weird things and missing links. Then when science explained exactly how that thing came to be, without ID involved, they just pointed to the next thing at one point ending up at flagella.

There is a whole Wikipedia page talking about how flagella evolved and how it came to be. The intelligent design people have been shouting about this for 3 decades now and there is so much info out there to find about how this came to be. If Destin wanted to approach this from a scientific standpoint, he would focus on that information, instead of presenting it like some kind of mystery we are still figuring it out today. And not keep telling people to have an open mind and how he can't figure it out. He could have even gone into why people might think it was ID and then explain the science why it is not. Something other online science communicators often do, give people the points they have been hearing from the "wrong" side and then go into those points and explain them.

Basically the whole subject itself is very hard to present without going into the whole ID versus evolution standpoint and the way he represented it was straight out of the ID playbook. And keep in mind all of this was thoroughly debunked back 20 years ago. Him bringing this up now is inexcusable.

I'm not even sure there is research still being done on this, the research was done decades before, there is no mystery.

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

He also repeats all of the bible thumper talking points around this subject, as if it’s a mystery nobody can explain and couldn’t have come to be without some kind of intelligent design at the helm.

He literally does not say that though, he says there's a lot of research into it and encourages people to read it.

This whole flagella thing was an exercise of goal post moving in the first place. The ID people kept pointing out weird things and missing links. Then when science explained exactly how that thing came to be, without ID involved, they just pointed to the next thing at one point ending up at flagella.

Yeah I agree, but I also think that you can't exactly blame someone else who was uninvolved with the initial argument for arguing a different thing at a different time. If one person criticizes a politician for not providing enough social services and another separate person complains about taxes that's not moving goal posts, those are just two different people.

There is a whole Wikipedia page talking about how flagella evolved and how it came to be.

Yes, but, did you read it? Its not exactly too resoundingly confident in any one theory.

And keep in mind all of this was thoroughly debunked back 20 years ago.

All of what? It is true that the flagella isn't unique if that's what you mean.

I’m not even sure there is research still being done on this, the research was done decades before, there is no mystery.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mmi.14658

Here's a relatively recent study that says basically what the wikipedia says:

Homing in on the T3SS, the exact evolutionary relation between injectisomes and flagella1 is debated. Phylogenetic analyses and functional arguments led to two models: (a) The evolution of modern flagella and injectisomes from a common ancestral protein export machinery (Gophna et al., 2003; Pallen and Gophna, 2007), or (b) The evolution of injectisomes from a flagellum-like ancestor (Abby and Rocha, 2012; Denise et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2000).

But it also says:

The T3SS is one of the most complex bacterial molecular machines, incorporating one to over a hundred copies of more than 15 different proteins into a multi-MDa transmembrane complex (Table 1). The system, especially the flagellum, has, therefore often been quoted as an example for “irreducible complexity,” based on the argument that the evolution of such a complex system with no beneficial intermediates would be exceedingly unlikely. However, it is now clear that, far from having evolved as independent entities, many secretion systems share components between each other and with other cellular machineries (Egelman, 2010; Pallen and Gophna, 2007).

I ofc am just a layman reading this, I agree it seems better understood that how I interpreted what he was saying, but it also doesn't seem nearly as well understood as you're saying.

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm not going to debate Intelligent Design in 2025, that's just dumb.

The whole thing boils down to: Just because we don't fully understand it, doesn't mean it's proof of god.

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You're thinking I'm saying something I'm not. And I think that was the case with your interpretation of the video too.

Nothing I've said here (or ever said in my life) is pro-intelligent design

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

I'm a different person weighing in here:

When you said:

The T3SS is one of the most complex bacterial molecular machines, incorporating one to over a hundred copies of more than 15 different proteins into a multi-MDa transmembrane complex (Table 1). The system, especially the flagellum, has, therefore often been quoted as an example for “irreducible complexity,” based on the argument that the evolution of such a complex system with no beneficial intermediates would be exceedingly unlikely. However, it is now clear that, far from having evolved as independent entities, many secretion systems share components between each other and with other cellular machineries (Egelman, 2010; Pallen and Gophna, 2007).

I ofc am just a layman reading this, I agree it seems better understood that how I interpreted what he was saying, but it also doesn't seem nearly as well understood as you're saying.

IMO it's a problem with the article. The article says that T3SS is cited as an example as something that's "irreducibly complex". I suppose that it's true that it is cited as that. But the second part of the paragraph explains why it isn't true that it's "irreducibly complex". The paragraph isn't explicit enough because the paragraph has probably evolved to be something that's true and equally dissatisfying to both sides.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 2 points 3 days ago

Thanks for sharing. He does sound like a devout Christian who does believe in a creator, but because of science is questioning his beliefs. It would've been nice for him to keep that opinion out of the video and just stick to the point: this thing is awesome.

As an atheist agnostic myself, I don't think anybody can claim to know that there was a creator or not. However, there is much more evidence for the lack of one than for it. Who knows, we might be wrong and we're just in some intricate simulation created by sentient beings, but that then forces the question if those sentient beings are in a simulation themselves and how far up does it go? The other option is that nothing was created and it just came to be.

Both options still raise the question of how either (creators or existence) came to be. To me, they might be unknowable.

What I do like about his presentation of the options is that he says wherever your flag is, learn more and always question your position. IMO that's actually sound advice. Nothing is for certain. Neither scientists nor believers can claim to know anything for certain. The difference between science and religion is that science is a process of learning with need to discard incorrect knowledge, while religion is the claim to know everything claiming there is no need to disregard facts as it is impossible for them to be wrong. Scientists can easily fall into the latter trap too.

[–] Venator@lemmy.nz 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

how is is not morally good from their perspective?

It is, but thier perspective is immoral.

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah that's a fair perspective I have. I just don't like when people aren't honest about their problem with it because they want to act like they're okay with religion.

[–] Venator@lemmy.nz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think religion is ok, as long as it isn't evangelical or spreading anti-intellectualism.

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Well aren't many religions inherently by their beliefs one of those things?

[–] iii@mander.xyz 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Believe can cross into delusion and become harmfull. I believe (hihi) creationism is part of the latter, as it also implies a hierarchy inbetween people and between people and other life.

Additionally, all evidence points away from intelligent design. For this youtube channel in particular, it's sad to see examples of belief over evidence.

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fundamentally isn't any religious belief in an omnipotent/world creating god creationist? I think the evidence trying to "prove" intelligent design is pretty weak, but the thing about essentially all religious belief is that its not exactly falsifiable. The argument can basically be as simple as "yes that evolved but god created everything in the world so it would evolve that way" or "no it didn't evolve, god created the world 5000 years ago, he just also made stuff that to any observer would appear older. he did that to intentionally obfuscate the truth so you must have faith"

[–] iii@mander.xyz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fundamentally isn't any religious belief in an omnipotent/world creating god creationist?

Oh yeah. This isn't a problem unique to Christianity.

but the thing about essentially all religious belief is that its not exactly falsifiable

I think the function of a belief system is to lessen fear in scary, doubtfull, uncertain, painfull situations. That's when an unfalsifiable happy ending brings comfort.

It's just that many of them were invented quite a while ago, and some things that used to be unknown and scary then, are now better understood or obsolete. No point in engaging in makebelief for those.

[–] aidan@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, but it seems like for a lot of people they either have to believe all of it or none of it

[–] iii@mander.xyz 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I notice the same. A sad observation in my opinion.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Do you have a source? I'd find it really ironic for a channel called "smarter every day" to push a creationist agenda.

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl -2 points 3 days ago

I've responded with a link in another reply in this thread.

Seems Destin missed that day and got dumber instead.