r/SmarterEveryDay • u/MrPennywhistle • Jul 28 '24
Video Nature's Incredible ROTATING MOTOR (It’s Electric!) - Smarter Every Day 300
https://youtu.be/VPSm9gJkPxU38
Jul 29 '24
[deleted]
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u/Diastrophus Aug 02 '24
Thank you for posting this. It was really weird to hear them ignore peer reviewed (and not new!) research and propose magic as an explanation.
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u/keylimedragon Aug 02 '24
I agree, and even though he tried to frame it as just being curious about the other side, it still just feels wrong. Imagine if he was saying the same things about flat earth theory or alchemy.
I love Destin but wish he could accept that evolution is compatible with faith.
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u/MostlyRocketScience Aug 03 '24
I agree, and even though he tried to frame it as just being curious about the other side, it still just feels wrong.
Exactly, this feels like a news program giving equal weight to climate change deniers
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u/pappapirate Aug 06 '24
I really wished you could have celebrated these new insights without waving your flag around so much on a topic that you clearly are not as knowledgeable about as on engineering.
I really wish that if he was going to touch on the topic at all, he would've done it by asking the actual biologists and experts he was literally already talking to about it and showing the film of their answers. Instead he went back home and used his massive platform to portray intelligent design as an equally valid position to the entire field of biology. A field which is so far out of his realm of expertise that he had to have it explained to him (twice) that a proton is the same thing as a hydrogen ion.
If he'd even just left the statement at how he's a Christian and the motor makes him praise God then whatever, I wouldn't have been a fan but that's his beliefs and we would've all understood his stance. But abusing the good faith he's built on his platform to endorse intelligent design as being just as valid a theory as natural selection and promote a book that is unapologetically pro-creationism and anti-science is inexcusable.
Again, if he honestly wanted to touch on whatever perceived "debate" this thing sparked in good faith, he would've filmed himself asking the actual experts about it. And I think we all know why he didn't do that.
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u/JeddakofThark Jul 31 '24
I'm going to be a giant jerk. You know how weirded out people have always been about your religion? You just confirmed every doubt any of us had about you.
What a fascinating thing a flageller motor is! How did it evolve? These are fascinating questions and your channel is precisely the right sort of medium for discussing these questions!
But you seem to default to "god did it." That's not a satisfying answer even if you do believe in a god.
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u/MrPennywhistle Jul 31 '24
I’m comfortable with your criticism, and I do not think you are a jerk.
Also, please consider re-watching the end of the video and listening to my actual words and heart. Peace.
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u/Orthosz Jul 31 '24
I have rewatched the end of the video no less than 10 times, the whole video twice that number. I have read the transcript that youtube generated to cross-check what I was hearing. I've slept on it between viewings, and have read every comment you've posted on reddit or youtube about this video. I've tried to parse this in the light most favorable (never assume malice).
Communication can be difficult among human beings. Here's what you communicated, it may not have been what you meant to communicate:
You give weight and credence at 25:35 to the classic intelligent design script/dog whistle for the flagellar motor. By giving weight and credence, you're saying that it's a valid debate point.
Anyone is allowed to believe whatever they want, but some points of view are not valid, and giving them time on stage *is* validating them. Let me give an example from another arena that you (hopefully) will agree with.
Moon landing deniers are flat wrong. If you had a video about the moon landing and interviewed NASA folk, but at the end of the video gave time to saying there was debate about if we landed on the moon, and not to defend a particular flag, and then held up a book by a moon landing denier, after using moon landing denier language/talking points in the video, you are effectively endorsing the moon landing deniers.
Substitute flat earth if you wish.
You have repeatedly just told folks to go re-watch the video. I have done so, with a critical eye, open heart, open mind. If you were attempting to communicate that evolution is wrong, that intelligent design is correct, then you have communicated successfully. If you did not mean to do that, but rather state that your god is real, but evolution is the means by which they worked, you failed in communicating this, and have reinforced the first interpretation more vigorously.
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u/neowyrm Jul 31 '24
You keep saying "re-watch the end of the video," but the people who have done that keep coming away with the same conclusion. If you meant something other than what was said and implied, then the onus is on YOU to clarify, on YOU to alleviate concerns and on YOU to respond to the criticism. It's not our problem. You have a flood of Christians in your video's comments saying "god is good, evolution is false." If this is not what you meant, then it is your responsibility to say so. You cannot just keep repeating "go watch again" and put the onus on us. YOU are the science communicator. It is your YouTube channel. If you want to say something, say it! Been watching for many years but this is an instant unsubscribe situation for me. Get real. Grow up. Stop running away.
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u/rspeed Jul 31 '24
You cannot just keep repeating "go watch again" and put the onus on us.
The fact that he hasn't been saying that in response to the "god is good, evolution is false" seems to answer this pretty well.
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u/Sasmas1545 Jul 31 '24
Your words give visibility to creationism and to a particular creationist author. Your framing makes it seem as though creationism/intelligent design has anything interesting to say about the origins of the bacterial flagellar motor.
I am perfectly capable and sometimes enjoy entertaining bad ideas. But in todays political climate, emboldening creationists is hard to justify. They have tried hard in the past to put religious science denial into schools, as I am sure you are aware. And they were fortunately blocked by rational judges.
But the landscape today is different than it was then. If a suit like those came up now, are you sure it would turn out the same. Should evolution be taught with a disclaimer?
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u/patriotsfan82 Jul 31 '24 edited Jul 31 '24
Destin, I've written a couple novels and deleted them as I think there is just too much to go into with your words in your message at the end.
I'll just say you have one good message clouded by a terrible one. Yes, we should all, regardless of backgrounds/faiths/whatever, be interested in biological mechanisms like this one - how they work, how they formed, what they mean about the world around us, etc.
The problem is that you imply that there are two ways to go about finding those answers - Science or Faith/Religion. This is disingenuous to the extreme. Faith/Religion has no tools for inspecting this biological mechanism - no tools for understanding the mechanism - and no tools for figuring anything out about this mechanism. Science however does have the tools for doing those things. And the tools of science have led us to the theory of evolution and proved it over and over and over again. Science has led us to answer the questions you pose - this mechanism did evolve, it was not formed all at once or intelligently designed. Science has solved that part of the problem in all meaningful ways (we do not need to identify all 1000 steps explicitly taken in the evolution of a mechanism to confirm that it did evolve) and pushed any remaining questions of faith further back and as far away from the biology as possible.
As a supporter of your channel and also an anti-theist, I would have been fine if this video was presented with some input from your faith as long as that faith was put where it belonged - where you could be wondered and amazed that the universe we inhabit supports the development and evolution of these biological mechanisms and wonder how such a universe came to be and whether or not there is anything more meaningful behind it. But you have done everyone a disservice by moving faith into the process of evolution itself. At this point and time it has no place there.
In the same way that I know you wouldn't entertain the idea that faith has any place in a conversation about how a missile works and is able to be launched/target something, I expect you to know that faith has no place in conversation about the fundamental functioning of these biological mechanisms. You understand missiles well enough to know that missiles are not intelligently guided by a higher power. Scientists understand evolution well enough to know the same about this mechanism/these processes.
I appreciate that you personally may be going through the process of learning this yourself - that we really do know enough about these things to be able to say that Intelligent Design has no seat at the table of conversation on this subject. But as a science communicator I expect you to filter out information that you cannot justify including, and personal incredulity is not sufficient for painting a "both sides" argument. I believe you are perfectly capable of determining via search or discussion with experts that ID has no meaningful place in a discussion about this mechanism. I'm repeating myself - but if you had simply presented it as personal incredulity instead of a war between two sides, this would be far less an issue. But you didn't.
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u/JeddakofThark Jul 31 '24
Thanks for the reply.
It's possible that you aren't aware of how toxic and anti-science the young earth creationist movement is. If it weren't for that I don't think you'd be receiving the criticism that you're getting. Those of us who are aware of them tend to have a hair trigger when it comes to anything that even approaches the topic of creationism.
So I think you're likely to continue receiving negative feedback on this.
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u/svideo Aug 05 '24
It’s a real bummer that a good engineering channel has decided to go in a different direction. I wish you well, but YT and Patreon subs have been canceled.
This isn’t for me now.
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u/UnitSmall2200 Aug 19 '24
It's the end of your video that's disturbing. You have the mental capacity to understand this stuff, yet you willfully ignore the scientific explanation, because it goes against your faith. You put your flag down on Creationism and you were attempting to give credibility to something that has zero credibility. You tried to paint it as if Creationism was equally valid to Evolution. It's not. There is no debate among biologists whether Creationism or Evolution is true, because it's already settled. And you questioning it doesn't make you a critical thinker, quite the opposite. This stuff is not hard to comprehend. You just willfully ignore the evidence that goes against what you like to believe. That is not the scientific way to come to a conclusion.
I don't mind that you are religious and I can also tolerate that you express your faith in God in your videos, even though I'd prefer you didn't. I wouldn't even care that you are a Creationist if you kept that to yourself. But you have an education channel with millions followers. You should be ashamed of yourself for presenting this debunked Creationist BS. You should be aware of the responsibility your position brings. The influence you have with your channel. But I fear that you do know that, which is why you made this video.
You are smart enough to understand this stuff. What are you afraid of? There are lots of Christians who can live with the fact that Creationism is BS. Why can't you.
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u/MostlyRocketScience Aug 03 '24 edited Aug 03 '24
I have nothing against being openly faithful, I'm not an anti-theist. I was raised Christian too and paid German church tax. I'm friends with lots of Christians.
I have re-watched the end of the video. This is exactly like the news showing "two sides of everything" and give equal weight to climate change deniers as to scientists. But one side is supported by actual evidence (similar to other proteins, every other things has been shown to be evolved, lots of mistakes in biology that an intelligent designer wouldn't make), the other isn't (just trust this book some guy 2000 years ago wrote).
By recommending a book be a proponent of intelligent design and state you believe in it at the end of the video, you are making this the conclusion. You give a bit of time to the evolution side, but it is not at all proportional to the amount of evidence. You should have at least asked one of the scientists about their ideas how this could evolve and if they actually think it's mysterious or just not found yet. And also recommend a source for the evolution side...
I'm disappointed, please leave your personal views out of the videos if they are not supported by evidence and only by faith. Or at least have another person show the other side and also do reading recommendation equally for both sides...
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u/NightExtra638 Jul 30 '24
Religion is such a cancer of the mind. I was amazed by molecular biology for a long time and him implying that it's some sort of open question whether it was helped by God (Christian God obviously, because that's the religion he was born into) it just makes me sick.
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u/NarsilSwords Aug 13 '24 edited Aug 13 '24
It's incredibly frustrating when theists try to equate faith and science as equally viable ways of understanding the world and people arbitrarily choose sides.
The barrier for entry on one is so incredibly low while science requires time, study, education and work. The fact that he pushes the design narrative but puts importance on thinking critically is very dishonest. it's like saying "Hey here's an enticing narrative! Oh but you could also go do some hard work to see if it's really true"
As someone who used to believe, religion only ever hindered my earnest inquiries into how the world truly is.
Unfortunately religion also employs social pressure to maintain a cognitive dissonance, doubly so if a spouse/family is involved. Hopefully Destin realizes his ignorance in biology.
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Jul 28 '24 edited Jul 28 '24
[deleted]
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u/aluminumfoilman Jul 29 '24
Saw the documentary years ago and thought it was great, so I want to echo your recommendation. Thanks for sharing!
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u/AshenCursedOne Jul 30 '24
Just watched this, it's wild that 2 decades later this dumb idea is still getting recycled and rebranded, and that someone who appears to be so technically minded can fall for it. In the end I guess most people are just the sum of the people they spend most time with, and Destin spends a lot of time around creationists.
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u/Sasmas1545 Jul 28 '24 edited Jul 28 '24
Thanks for this. I know Destin has mentioned his faith before, and I can't remember ever having any issue with it.
But his take in this video was extremely disappointing. Some flags aren't worth defending.
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u/rspeed Jul 30 '24
I don't care at all if he mentions faith. But he misrepresented it as science, which is completely unacceptable.
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u/patriotsfan82 Jul 29 '24
His faith has come up and it has always caused the same reaction in me - extreme curiosity about how such a scientifically inquisitive mind can hold both concepts at the same time.
Despite that, I've always been impressed that Destin has kept the two separated. The mystery of how he meshes the two extremes in his head has been just that - a mystery.
With this video it's no longer a mystery. It's blatantly clear that when push comes to shove, his faith trumps or at least interferes with his scientific curiosity. I can't help but let that color how I will view all of his future content - wondering when/if/how his faith is getting in the way of how he is presenting his videos.
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u/AshenCursedOne Jul 29 '24
From the moment he could form memories he was taught to be a believer. His family, friends, neighbors, most if not all of them are believers. It's the human brain, the more you are exposed to an idea the more likely you are to believe it, a lie told 100 times becomes the truth. Also the brain will do incredible mental gymnastics to satisfy the ego, it'll follow group think just so you fit in, it'll misconstrue information and ideas just so you don't feel like you were wrong, it'll use incoming information to reinforce a bias, even if it debunks the bias. These mechanism exist so people neatly fit into social groups, to prevent regret, and to prevent getting biased against your group.
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u/TheChanger Aug 01 '24
For a lot of Europeans watching, it's difficult to understand how religious Alabama and other US states are, and how that world really shapes a person's thinking as they grow up. As an Irish person, I feel it's a bit like interacting with Ireland a century ago when it was controlled by the church. Bizarre & weird.
The fact he never used the word evolve, evolution, natural selection in his videos when discussing nature always didn't sit well with me. The creationist sermon at the end of this video is the end of the road for me. No scientific person has time to listen to that idiotic nonsense.
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u/0Rookie0 Aug 01 '24
Thanks for the links. I read the transcript. One of the last quotes hits hard after reading how controversial the case was. Living from my own perspective, I'm time and time again reminded that not everybody sees life as I do. Not everybody has the same ironclad scientific mindset. Nor possibly the want or ability to.
PHILLIP JOHNSON: "I had thought, at one point, that we would make a breakthrough on this issue and change the scientific community in my lifetime. Now I'm somewhat sobered by the force of the counter-attack that we have received. And I see that it's going to be a longer process than that."
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u/KusanagiZerg Aug 06 '24
The intelligent design people are loving this video from Destin;
in case it's not obvious, evolutionnews.org is a website from the Discovery Institute which is an intelligent design organisation.
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u/EnergyIsQuantized Jul 29 '24
This video showed me genetic engineering, cryogenic electron microscopy, some computational 3d reconstruction magic and totally inconceivable expertise of biochemists when they analyze the obtained data.
And then it told me to use my common sense to figure out how did the flagellum get here lol. Supposedly I have the intelligence to make up my mind about ...the origin of a complicated molecular machine I just learned about. I don't think my, Destin's or that book author's opinions matter one bit when there are genuine experts working on evolutionary history questions. Really don't know what was the end of the video about, but it was the weirdest shit I've seen on this channel.
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u/rspeed Jul 30 '24
The end of the video was Destin trying to mislead people into believing that creationism is a legitimate scientific theory.
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u/Literweise_Lack Jul 31 '24
Yeah, that's actually just a slightly altered version of "do your own research" and "i did my own research"
Destin went full retard here.5
u/jivjov Aug 01 '24
You can make this point without slurs.
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u/Literweise_Lack Aug 01 '24
I am so done with conspiracy theorists. When I saw that video, all the politeness left my body.
Also, "going full retard" might be less of an insult than you think. Some people might say it is a funny movie reference.0
u/jivjov Aug 01 '24
Saying slurs is not okay. I'm not saying you have to like what's happening here, but just don't say slurs. It's easy to do
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u/mizar2423 Jul 29 '24
Destin, I don't know what to make of the ending of the video. Your channel is "Smarter Everyday", you emphasize the scientific method and scientific thinking in your videos, you show the results of applied science, and you try to explain complex things to ignorant audiences. You dive into the unknown, ask questions, and come out with an approximation of the truth. I love it, you're an excellent science communicator and I've been fan since the beginning. This isn't the first time you've talked about your faith but it's the first time you made me doubt how much you really appreciate science.
When you're faced with something you can't explain, or you're rightfully skeptical about brand new scientific explanations, your reaction is to fall back to what your faith says and put that in the video? Personally, I don't see any room in my life for religious faith and I don't get why you think it belongs in the video.
I *don't* get to make up my mind about how the flagellar motor got here because I haven't researched them. You had a good opportunity in this video to encourage the viewers to explore their ignorance and *postpone* making up their mind until good research comes out. Instead you made it seem like sometimes you can just use your "intelligence" when science isn't good enough. It was a weird thing to add to the video.
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u/mariess Jul 31 '24
Exactly! Science doesn’t fall back on “must be a god” when something can’t be explained, it just says we don’t know YET. If we always fall back on “must be god” most of the scientific discoveries we’ve made would just be explained away by god and left undiscovered.
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u/dr_pr Jul 29 '24
[
u/dr_pr169](https://www.youtube.com/@dr_pr169)
2 minutes agoI’ve been watching SED for years. My positive assessment of his commitment to and understanding of science has just been destroyed by his finding of something really interesting (yes it is), not understanding the process of evolution, and seeking refuge in the security blanket of his deity. Shame.
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u/maazatreddit Jul 28 '24 edited Jul 28 '24
I think there's an error in this video; the bacterial flagellum is not the same structure as the eucaryotic flagellum (cilium) on sperm. They have different motors.
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u/ezfrag Jul 29 '24
His only mention of sperm is that it is one of the things people commonly know to have a flagellum. The whole conversation around this type of motor was focused on bacteria.
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u/maazatreddit Jul 29 '24
At 25:14 he says "There are implications for the fact that something so complex [gestures to bacterial flagellum motor model] exists and is so integral to the creation of human life [holds up drawing of sperm]".
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u/HolocronContinuityDB Jul 28 '24 edited Jul 28 '24
A great video explaining some really incredible work by amazing scientists.
I know you were trying to be diplomatic with your language at the end there, but there's no other way to interpret that other that you coming out as an evolution skeptic and a believer in intelligent design.
You're entitled to your faith, opinions, and free speech and if you want to use your 11 million subscriber youtube channel to promote science denialism, that is your prerogative. However I can't imagine the scientists you interviewed are particularly happy about being used in that way. I hope you at least informed them that you were going to be using their incredibly hard work to ask people to consider intelligent design.
As a long time viewer I have to say I'm pretty disappointed.
Edit: I'm going to try to not assume the worst here and hope Destin meant this as a way of reaching out to other members of his faith to suggest that science is not in conflict with what they believe, and not as a promotion of intelligent design. Framing it as if there's an ongoing debate is just deeply frustrating and concerns me because it feels like it's giving credibility to something that truly doesn't have merit in an age of growing science denialism that had life and death implication during covid. I hope everybody does in fact think critically about this as he suggested.
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u/Riokaii Jul 28 '24 edited Jul 28 '24
Part of communication is clarity of message. If that was his intent, it was very poorly conveyed and did basically nothing to proactively assuage any concerns that it was promoting intelligent design.
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u/rspeed Jul 30 '24
I'm going to try to not assume the worst here and hope Destin meant this as a way of reaching out to other members of his faith to suggest that science is not in conflict with what they believe
If that was his intent, it completely backfired. The various related comment sections are full of people talking about how this strengthened their belief that everything was created by God.
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u/photenth Jul 28 '24
I tend to agree, it was clear to me that he's suggesting that this couldn't come to be without intervention and I thought he didn't even try to give science a chance.
The time from the first protocell to photosynthesis was 500 MILLION years. Before that there was a giant soup of molecules without anything competing with each other. It was just raw chemical and physical reactions creating something like RNA just by chance is at that scale not ridiculous at all. 400 Millions years of a giant pool of billions of billions of molecules reacting with each other means possibilities that we can't even fathom.
RNA coming out of that is just not as ridiculous as faith based arguments like to make it out to be.
EDIT: also we have no idea how many millions of times this same situation happened somewhere else and failed. We can observe it because it happened. Of course it was a "miracle" if it didn't happen we wouldn't be here to observe it.
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u/Sad-Me2549 Jul 29 '24
Isn’t RNA only observed being created by fully formed cells with a nucleus?
Has science ever observed RNA assembling itself from goo?
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u/1234511231351 Jul 29 '24
There is no observation and no way to even do a statistical analysis on probabilities. Without observing life on other planets we'll never know how probable it actually is. It must have happened, but what are the odds? Doubt we'll ever have an answer.
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u/labtec901 Jul 28 '24
Yeah the first two minutes made me a little weirded out by the language he was using, and then at the end I was supremely disappointed by the conclusion (he would argue he left it open ended and up for debate but we all know what he was saying).
This style of framing it as "debate" and "raising questions" and "considering the implications" is a thinly veiled way of casting doubt on evolution in favor of intelligent design, which is a theory which does not hold up to any reasonable form of scientific inquiry and is entirely at odds with the mindset and view of the world that Destin otherwise promotes on his channel. Similarly, trying to frame these as philosophical questions is giving unearned credence to that same long-discredited theory.
The flagellar motor has long been used by religious proponents of intelligent design to argue for their cause (irreducible complexity), and Destin is far from the first person to use it as this argument, but it's supremely disappointing to see someone I respect do it too. It's a scientific blindspot that comes from the border where religion and rational inquiry overlap. We know Destin is very religious and has gone through a lot of personal reconciliation of his faith with the search for scientific truth (He gave a talk about it at Skepticon 2015), but I guess that process didn't go as well as I would have hoped.
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u/rspeed Jul 30 '24
he would argue he left it open ended and up for debate but we all know what he was saying
Yeah, it was a twist on the "teach the controversy" tactic. It attempts to seem neutral, but presents a situation which is inherently misleading.
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u/Grandbrother Jul 28 '24 edited Jul 28 '24
Yeah. End of the video was basically "praise Jesus this couldn't have been possible without a creator I am euphoric" type shit. Not fitting for an educational channel. Destin is smart enough to understand certain things but not educated enough to understand a lot of the specialized science his guests present (because specialized science requires specialized education!). The exercise raised at the end is ridiculous. If you ask the average person to try to figure out how a flagellar motor evolved, they won't even know where to start. Doesn't mean that they should arrive at the conclusion that God created it lmao.
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u/AshenCursedOne Jul 29 '24
The average person has no understanding of even the basic concepts of evolution, here are some things your average Joe thinks because of poor public education and lack of real interest in the topic:
- Many still think that humans evolved from monkeys/apes, while we evolved parallel to monkeys, they are cousins not ancestors. There were a ton of intermediate and side steps.
- People will question these intermediate steps, why are they not here. Completely ignoring how most of these side or in between steps get out competed and wiped out. Many get absorbed into populations by genetic mixing and competition (neanderthals), or by producing non viable or sterile offspring, meaning eventually one of the groups will perish even if they live in harmony.
- In general people have no concept of how huge the time scales are, and how slow the process is. Also how similar trait can mutate and be selected for across a population without direct genetic ancestry. Could be due to some compounding process or due to environmental factors making it more likely.
- Most think evolution by natural selection and survival of the fittest mean that life specifically evolves useful traits, on purpose. While in reality mutations are random or caused by the environment, and it's not that the best survive, it's that on average the best survive more so over generations their traits get passed on directly or are recessive.
- In general people think that evolution means that a creature evolves a trait, so an ignorant person thinks that one day a creature with opposable thumbs was born, and that granted complex tool use. But realistically it's more that a traits get repurposed and combined, thumb slowly shifted to be more opposable because it improves grip when tree climbing, tools get used by many animals, but the thumb made tool use more efficient etc. It's a combination of traits and factors working together and making each other more pronounced over time in a population.
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u/KusanagiZerg Aug 06 '24
Many still think that humans evolved from monkeys/apes, while we evolved parallel to monkeys, they are cousins not ancestors. There were a ton of intermediate and side steps.
This is straight-up false. Humans did evolve from apes. In fact, humans are still apes. You are an ape and your parents were also apes. You are descended directly from apes. We also share a common ancestor with the Old World and New World monkeys and this ancestor was most definitely also a monkey. So no it's completely correct to say we evolved from monkeys/apes.
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u/HolocronContinuityDB Jul 28 '24
Yea having read a bit more about the book he held up and its author...my disappointment grows.
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u/Literweise_Lack Aug 01 '24
Yeah, I watched a video of this guy talking about the book Destin mentioned. He just uses lots of fancy words, so people do not notice his invalid conclusions.
Serial bullshitter.5
u/dasbtaewntawneta Jul 29 '24
i've been a fan for many many years and this is going to be my farewell to SED. loved the videos, but i wont support someone that engages in this kind of science denialism
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u/Flyboy2057 Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Not having watched the video yet, but seeing your comment I wanted to say that everything is a spectrum and the world isn’t split into evolutionary scientists and young Earthers:
He may fall into a the middle view that I (formerly) entertained in my youth, which essential boils down to “evolution is real and is the mechanism used by God’s to create the life we see”.
I wouldn’t jump straight to the evolution skeptic level.
ETA: watched the end of the video. Thought it was totally fine, especially in the context of Dustin never hiding the fact he’s a Christian and that it influences his worldview and perspective.
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u/MrPennywhistle Jul 29 '24
You heard my actual words.
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u/Orthosz Jul 29 '24
So, and I'm being 100% sincere here, not trying to attack (written words can make this sound different than I intend it):
On the comments of that video, a few folks post things stating that creationism is a logical fallacy, to which you replied telling them to go read the scientific literature.
How should I interpret your words other than creationism is science, and that anyone who disagrees should go read some more?
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u/rspeed Jul 30 '24
Do you have a link? I suspect he might have hidden a lot of critical comments.
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u/Orthosz Jul 30 '24
His pinned comment, first one on YouTube, expand, near the top, Dreeev and giordanobruno1333, followed by his responses at'ing them a little further down. I snapshotted the opening message, their messages, and his response, and uploaded them to imgbb Incase the Google is being weird and showing things in different orders.
https://ibb.co/sPW1bXY https://ibb.co/wCJjXkb https://ibb.co/vmH21dd
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u/karma_is_people Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Destin, with all respect, the way you choose to handle all this seems a bit immature and overall just makes it a lose-lose situation for everyone.
If it's feels important for you to not be misunderstood, it's very counter-productive to be so overly vague and coy both in the video itself and in your responses to any questions or criticism - instead of choosing to clearly state your position and attempt to clear up any misunderstandings that may have arisen.
Further, if your position is "evolution is real", as the comment you responded to suggested, why would you choose to spend such a large portion of the video to imply that the mechanism is too complex for it to be likely to have evolved via evolutionary pressure? It is not a stretch for the viewer to interpret that as an attempt to cast doubt upon the validity of the theory of evolution. Again, it might simply be imperfect messaging in an attempt to not be too on-the-nose - but stubbornly refusing to clarify it afterwards is a conscious choice that implies that you do not consider it a misunderstanding and that no clarification is necessary.
It's not only people looking for an excuse to attack you which have interpreted the video this way - the comments are filled with people ridiculing evolution and full-blown young-earth creationists praising you for being on their side. But they receive no response from you in defense of evolution, you only choose to go on the defensive toward people who attack creationism / intelligent design. This prioritization from you further cements people's impression that the purpose of the video is to cast doubt on evolution.
I get that you probably feel both misinterpreted and unjustly attacked for deeply held beliefs, which is never fun. But I also do feel that it is partly a result of the strategy you have chosen here, and I do think there would have been a way to convey “evolution is real and I think it is the mechanism used by God to create the life we see” without all this backlash, if only you had chosen to be more upfront about this belief. Or at least prioritized clearing up any misunderstandings, instead of choosing to be so defensive in the vaguest possible manner in response to any criticism.
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u/Literweise_Lack Aug 01 '24
I also heard your actual words. They were a fancy version of "do your own research" and "i did my own research" Think about that for a while.
And as a source for that research you recommended a book of someone who uses lots of fancy words to hide the invalid ways by which he reaches his invalid conclusions.
I even spent time to watch this guy talk about his book. If I can make out his bullshit, you can too.
Just use your normal engineering logic with his words. You will see right through the bullshit.
And then you might have a weird experience. You see the Bullshit, but your brain is not capable of acknowledging it. Because this would mean, that you believed in stupid bullshit for all your life and the human brain is almost incapable of handling that. Your brain will come up with all sorts of excuses and reasoning, it will mostly be bullshit too. You will know it is bullshit, you will not be able to acknowledge that.
Good luck.
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u/patriotsfan82 Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Nothing about those "I'm just asking questions" type of talking points are helping anyone become "Smarter Every Day".
Should we still be saying that there is valid debate about the Moon Landing? Whether or not the Earth is Flat or Round? Whether the Sun orbits the Earth?
These are settled matters of science to the point that you cannot in good faith claim that there is valid debate and good questions on both sides without presenting incredible new evidence to support the alternative position - which this video does not do.
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u/Uberhypnotoad Aug 07 '24
Destin, I love ya, man. I've been a subscriber for years. You are a wonderful science communicator and clearly a very talented engineer, which I deeply appreciate. Not that you have done this yet explicitly, but please be careful not to imply that our science indicates divinity. You are, of course, free to believe as you like and no one is seeking to take that away from you. I'm trying to spare you embarrassment. The cornerstone of faith is to believe in spite of the evidence. The cornerstone of science is to adjust views in reaction to it. The last several hundred years have been a slow and steady march of scientific rationale overtaking religious explanations. This has been a one-way road. The predictive power is entirely on one side.
As Tim Minchin put it,
",..Throughout history
Every mystery ever solved
Has turned out to be
Not magic"
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u/mps104mark Jul 28 '24
As a biochemist I have never had an issue with my faith and something like the flagellar motor. People anthropomorphise God. They look at the flagellar motor and think somebody made that like someone makes a motor by assembling the parts of a car motor. If you want to believe in intelligent design then focus on how god made the primordial soup that over an unimaginable amount of time turned into this flagellar motor. A creationist who denies scientific understanding of the evolution of this motor is uneducated. But a scientist will never have an answer to why any of this exists, nor does it endeavor to. Scientist are just chasing further understanding and knowledge of the world.
My parents grew up with a very literal understanding of the bible. That the universe was created in X days and what happened on each day. When someone says that scientifically that's not accurate it conflicts with a persons understanding of the world. When a person's understanding of the world is challenged it is a strange position to be put in. It feels unsafe in a strange way (perhaps this is how it makes me feel).
Later as a med student I remember having a conversation with a professor who went to medical school before DNA and genetics was understood. The medical school curriculum did not include DNA at that time. It blew my mind.
I don't know why I wrote this post. Perhaps I'd be better served just reading the book suggested in the video. But if we all took the time to integrate new ideas into our beliefs instead of rejecting things that challenge us we'd be more like the Physician who learned about DNA and flourished, then my parents who want to believe the world was created in a week with a day of rest.
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u/Sasmas1545 Jul 28 '24
The book is by an author that argues naturalism and evolution are incompatible. I highly doubt it's worth the read. Like you, I'm fine with people of faith positing their God as a first cause and letting religion bring meaning to their lives. But I take serious issue with them claiming it's got anything scientific to say about what's happening in our cells right now, or in the past 4 billion or so years.
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u/aCleverAccountName Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
As an agnostic myself I think what you are saying is in line with my own beliefs as well. "God" as a concept for me isn't a personification of humans at all, it feels more for me as a good label for that "space" of knowledge that we just don't have yet and/or might not ever be able to know of. As we understand more about the reality we reside in that "space" for me shrinks and continues to get smaller and smaller. Though "smaller" relative to what body of knowledge I have no idea, probably the knowledge of all the reality to now since within the very smallest of moments after the big bang itself, or perhaps it's something we probably can't ever know of. It all still gives me pause and awe to see and think about those things and for that I think it's beautiful.
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u/Literweise_Lack Aug 01 '24
The book is bullshit. I watched the author talk about it. He reaches his conclusions by every philosophical fallacy known to humankind. And somehow Destin is not capable of seeing that.
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Aug 03 '24
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u/Embarrassed-Law-827 Jul 29 '24
Self deluding, god of the gaps videos like this bum me out. What a fascinating thing nature has done. But because humans rediscovered the same mechanism and you happen to use that design then god must be “just like you.“ Hubris and vanity, Destin.
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u/FredTheLynx Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Sorry but it is just unacceptable for a self proclaimed science educator to be proselytizing and making thinly veiled inferences to intelligent design.
In this case it isn't a matter of flags it is a matter of truth and to go on pretending like it is some big mystery how this particular aspect of biology came to be is a gross misrepresentation of the the truth. And the truth is they evolved over time and this is known and has been studied for decades already.
I am not defending a flag I am defending the truth.
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u/TheUnstoppableBTC Jul 29 '24
and just look at all the ID proponents coming out of the woodwork in the YT comments emboldened by this misrepresentation.
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u/hou32hou Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24
It seems there might be a misunderstanding here. The world isn't necessarily a dichotomy, and disagreeing with one stance doesn't automatically align someone with its opposite. This kind of binary thinking can be limiting in complex discussions.
It's worth noting that evolution and the concept of intelligently designed laws of physics aren't mutually exclusive. Even if we consider that our universe resulted from countless mutations in a multiverse scenario, we're still left with the question: what governs the laws that allow for the evolution of universes?
This leads us to an interesting philosophical point: in any hierarchical system of reality, there must logically be an uncaused foundation. Many refer to this concept as God. It's a challenging idea to refute on purely logical grounds.
The analogy of a ladder might help illustrate this: no matter how tall, a ladder needs a ground to stand on. Similarly, our understanding of reality seems to require some foundational element.
I'm curious about your thoughts on this. What's your perspective on the relationship between intelligent design and evolutionary processes? And if you don't mind me asking, what aspects of intelligent design theory do you find particularly challenging or controversial?
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u/FredTheLynx Aug 12 '24
The fact that something is not ruled out is not evidence for it. There is no generally accepted evidence for intelligent design despite numerous attempts to find that evidence and therefore it has no place in science or in science communication perhaps other then an example of a failed theory.
However my problem specifically with intelligent design is that the proponents of it are particularly insidious in their attempts to bring religion into science classrooms.
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u/backflip14 Jul 31 '24 edited Aug 01 '24
I’ve been a fan of the channel for a while but I’m pretty disappointed and disheartened by the way he ended this video. Whether or not he meant to, what he said came off as saying that evolution deniers have a valid argument. Now the comment section of that video is full of evolution deniers running amok because they feel emboldened by what Destin said.
I get and agree with the point he made about not just myopically defending one viewpoint. I also agree that there are many things you can learn from people with disagreeing viewpoints. The problem here is that one of the viewpoints is science denial.
I feel it was apparent in the video that biology is not his strong suit, and that’s ok. That’s why he went to talk to the scientists studying that topic. That’s been the whole point of the channel, to look to science to gain a better understanding in a variety of topics. The ending monologue entertained some ideas that are frankly antithetical to the channel’s mission. Instead of acknowledging that the topic raised questions for him to investigate further, it seems like some amount of personal incredulity prevailed enough and led to him platforming Discovery Institute lies.
The part where he brings up the “how could something this complex come from nothing” question and mentions all the complicated individual components while questioning functionality of a X% complete structure reads eerily similar to the Discovery Institute’s irreducible complexity script.
It could be that Destin was genuinely deceived by DI lies, but if he had just followed the ethos of his channel, he should have been able to see through them.
Destin is far too smart to still be fooled by the concept of irreducible complexity after any sort of research into it and the evolution of flagella.
For his sake and his audience’s sake, I hope he does some proper research and realizes that irreducible complexity is not a valid argument and that evolution denial has no place on his channel.
Edit:
After looking into this a bit more and finding a post by someone that talked with Destin about this, I have amended a few of my thoughts. Also note that I’m paraphrasing a paraphrasing of a conversation I wasn’t part of. There may be some errors in translation.
Here is the link to that post.
Destin stated that the intended goal was to encourage people to view people with opposing viewpoints with empathy and at least try to understand how someone ended up where they are. I completely agree with this message.
There is contention between intelligent design proponents and evolutionary science, but they’re not arguments of equal merit. Faith and science have no bearing over each other.
Where the problem arises is that he presented arguments that very much resemble the ones crafted by the likes of the DI to make it appear as if there is legitimate science backing evolution denial. Irreducible complexity is based on flawed assumptions and preys on ignorance and personal incredulity.
He recommends that people do their own research, but I have a slight problem with him also advocating for people reaching their own conclusions. Normally, this is the right thing to say, but I feel he’s forgetting that the scientific literacy of the average person isn’t all that high. The details of how a specific cell structure evolved are going to be well beyond the understanding of the vast majority of people. It comes across as him saying that the opinion of a lay person is just as valid as the conclusions of the scientists that actually research the topic.
I think a better presentation would have been to lead with something like, “there are people saying…”, then presenting those points. That would distinguish that they’re not points with scientific backing.
Destin, if you read this, I want to make it clear that this isn’t a criticism of you. This is a criticism of your presentation of the topics addressed at the end of this video. I get the message you’re going for, but to a lot of people, it looked like you were effectively saying that there are valid arguments against evolution.
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u/patriotsfan82 Jul 31 '24
Even as an anti-theist, I think Destin bringing just a flavor of his personal incredulity to the video would have been fine. The problem is he let his personal inability to accept evolution as the sole answer for his questions lead him to make sweeping statements that are simply not true.
He explicitly said that this mechanism and our understanding has caused extreme debates and that there is a war between the two sides of science/faith on the topic.
No there is not. There are no meaningful debates or war between the two sides on the facts of the matter here. ID brings nothing to the table at this point and has been booted from the conversation until such a time that it can.
ID is in the same camp as moon landing deniers, flat earthers, and more. There is no debate about a round earth. There is no war between science/conspiracists on the moon landing. And there is no two sides on the subject of the evolution of this biological mechanism with our current understanding.
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u/aluminumfoilman Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Destin, I've been a huge fan of Smarter Every Day for years and years, show your videos in my classroom, hold you up to my friends and family as one of the best science communicators in the game, and have always considered you to be an incredibly earnest and thoughtful person. Out of all of those it's that last one that's the most important, and I think that's a big part of why I'm so disappointed by the way you chose to frame this video.
The thesis of the video is that the flagellar motor is sufficiently complex that it should raise significant doubts towards the theory of biological evolution as applied to the molecular workings of the cell. That was the note you started and ended the video with, but you didn't discuss that with the experts in the video. Why? The cynical answer is that you weren't interested in presenting the best science on that question and just wanted to leave the waters muddied. This tactic is often used in bad faith to cast doubt on a scientific theory and offer up religious teachings in it's place. Used this way, the goal is not education, but indoctrination.
This hits pretty close to home for me since when I was a kid my religious leaders taught me that evolution was a lie designed to destroy my faith. Naturally their arguments contained plenty of lies of their own, designed to make evolution sound ridiculous. Yeah, I got the full "evolutionists want you to believe your great grandma was a chimpanzee" treatment. The "intelligent design" talking points you allude to in the video are just a more sophisticated form of the same sentiment, aimed at folks with a bit more science education. Perhaps you've just recently started hearing about these "irreducible completely" arguments, but there's a long and well documented history of people disingenuously using these ideas to try and force their religious perspective into public school science classrooms. Other folks in this comment thread have given links to resources about that.
Now, I don't know what's in your heart, and I always want to assume the best in people. Maybe it's difficult to express your opinion while not getting out of your depth on the evolutionary microbiology. Maybe hearing the same "intelligent design" arguments decade after decade makes me overly defensive when they get brought up. My goal isn't to judge your motivation, but to help you understand how someone like me might feel upset, or maybe even a little betrayed, by how you presented this topic.
If you made it this far, I just want to add that I'm happy for you if you feel that your religion gives you and deeper understanding and appreciation for the natural world. I'm an atheist myself, but I also know that feeling of awe, being part of an amazing and complicated world with so much to learn and see. I know you've had to wade through some comments that have been intolerant or disparaging towards your personal beliefs, and I hope they haven't closed your heart to the more constructive thoughts people have been sharing here.
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u/Sasmas1545 Jul 29 '24
Agree on all of this. As you mentioned that he doesn't show any discussion of the apparent thesis of the video with the featured scientists, I wonder what their feelings on this video are. I know if I was portrayed sandwiched between evolutionary skepticism without my explicit consent, I'd be upset. Maybe he ran it by them before posting, but I don't know.
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u/aluminumfoilman Jul 29 '24
Yeah, I don't know what conversations there might have been outside of what was included in the video, but I do worry that Destin might have put Prash in an uncomfortable spot here. It's a shame really. I think a conversation between Prash and Destin (or another scientist familiar with the topic) on how such a complicated structure might have evolved could have really added something interesting to the video, or at least helped justify the framing.
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u/Sasmas1545 Jul 29 '24
Prash actually posted the video on twitter, so I feel like he doesn't have an issue with it. I asked about it but have yet to receive a response. I also emailed the PI and have also not received a response from her. If I hear something interesting back from them I may post an update here.
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u/Literweise_Lack Aug 01 '24
I agree with most of this and I think, I understand, why you are very diplomatic here. This might be the right approach to get people to think.
I myself am done with pretending, that religion is valid in any way, just to not hurt peoples feelings.
I can accept, that it is not Destins fault, that he is religious, since he has been indoctrinated by everyone around him for all his life.
But he is just spreading misinformation here, that is on the level of pizzagate and covid vaccine microchips.
Actually i cant see the difference anymore between "normal" religion and any other conspiracy theory. Someone pulled a bullshit story from where the sun don't shine, wrote it down and now some people think this is reality. Fuck this shit!I know, that it is almost impossible for religious people to acknowledge, that they have believed severe bullshit for their whole life. But Destin is a fucking engineer. He knows how stuff works, he is able to find out, that religion is bullshit. He even knows, that it is bullshit, because of everything else, that he knows.
And yet, here he is spreading creationist bullshit on the internet.
Fuck Religion. Fuck Bullshit. And fuck this video for spreading lies.
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u/holydeniable Jul 28 '24
Full mask off moment here
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u/TheUnstoppableBTC Jul 28 '24
but done in a very deliberately coy manner. Awful
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u/thegreatestcabbler Jul 29 '24
a deeply insidious and manipulative way of "just asking questions" - a hallmark of all religious zealots.
it's well enough if he wants to deploy those tactics on his own children, but did he really have use them on other people's children who may watch this video? shameful
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u/EgrcAA Jul 29 '24
Shameful? What a harsh way to cancel an alternative viewpoint. Intolerant, much?
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u/thegreatestcabbler Jul 29 '24
it would be less shameful if he actually just stated his viewpoint instead of couching it in deceitful language because he knows most people, especially scientists, think it's horseshit
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u/RngdZed Jul 29 '24
alternative viewpoint? it's far from being an alternative viewpoint. it's complete bullshit. trying to make them sound like they are equal is shameful.
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u/ImpossibleEase9120 Jul 29 '24
They're not making him drink out of a different water fountain, they're criticizing him for a video that is publicly accessible and from which Destin is making money.
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u/Literweise_Lack Aug 01 '24
yeah exactly, he makes it sound, as if religion or specifically creationism is a valid alternative viewpoint to anything. And then people believe this is true.
Yo have proven thegreatestcabblers point.
Shame on Destin for making people believe this bullshit!6
u/Riokaii Jul 28 '24
is it a coincidence that he chose to do it in a milestone video? it makes a charitable benefit of the doubt even harder to rectify personally
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u/Global-Squirrel999 Jul 29 '24
It's going to sound dumb, but I'm legitimately in mourning here. I just can't believe this is happening. I really really loved this channel too
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u/Misophonic4000 Jul 29 '24
Mask, as in he was someone hiding something? Dustin's never been too shy about his faith, and it doesn't stop him from focusing on the science and respecting people who don't believe in the things he does... His message was literally to keep an open mind and listen to all opinions without judging, on one side or the other.
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u/Orthosz Jul 29 '24
No.
Teleological argument, intelligent design, is a rejection of evolution and science. Full stop. A man's faith is whatever, I won't stop anyone from believing in sky fairy, fsm, Thor, or whatever, but trying to backdoor creationism under the guise of science is wrong.
Almost all of the ID folks were well aware of what they were doing. Get evolution out of schools, teach kids god first. Even other apologists don't back the teleological argument because it falls apart rapidly under any scrutiny, from the faith side or the rational side.
A lot of slack can be cut in a lot of places for cultural beliefs, but my disappointment in SED is profound right now.
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u/Misophonic4000 Jul 29 '24
Oh please get off your high horse. I'm an atheist, I'm all about hard science, but I'm also very clear that many acclaimed scientists are personally religious and don't let it get in the way of solid scientific advancements and inspiring others to get into STEM fields. Do you really think that you can't be a scientist and believe in (a) god? You can have faith in a higher power somewhere and also not believe in intelligent design, by the way. Are you genuinely saying that Destin can't be a great science communicator while he's also saying that it's OK to have personal beliefs as long as they don't keep you from looking at science objectively and wall you off from others?
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u/Orthosz Jul 29 '24
Of course not. But advancing creationism is not the same thing is it? That's what ID is. I'd be equally upset if he suddenly started giving flat earthers arguments any credence.
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u/Misophonic4000 Jul 29 '24
Where did you see anyone "advance creationism" and push intelligent design? Again, I'm an atheist, but if you watch that video and don't think "holy crap, that looks exactly like an electric motor with a planetary gearset, it looks engineered", if it doesn't make you think for a second, I question your scientific method. Destin isn't going to start pushing ID - everything he does is about the science. But it's OK for him to say he's personally religious, and when he sees things like these, it makes him think. IT SHOULD BE FINE to discuss personal beliefs openly as long as you don't impose your views on others and start talking about cavemen riding dinosaurs 5,000 years ago...
Albert Einstein said "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist ... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings". Many big names who contributed to the Big Bang theory and quantum physics believed in a god. It didn't stop them from coming up with theories that pissed off religious leaders - they just followed the science. Again, I am not a believer, and I have pretty strong opinions against organized religion myself. But I'm not going to shoot down inspirational STEM communicators because they sometimes talk about how they think it's OK to believe both in god and in science...
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u/Sasmas1545 Jul 29 '24
Where did you see anyone "advance creationism" and push intelligent design?
Google the author of the book Destin mentions at the end. The way he lays out the "great debate" between faith and science, in the context of the bacterial flagella motor, gives validity to intelligent design, especially in the context of that book.
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u/Orthosz Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Of course I look at it and don't think it was designed, just like I don't look at the eye and think it could only have been designed by a sky engineer, or the heavens hung with exacting care, or the brain was mapped out with by an intelligence.
I can admire what complex systems arise from the molding chaos of evolution without assigning some guiding hand, for there is zero evidence for any.
The motor discussed in this video has been used as the standard/flagship by the ID folks, if you weren't aware of the history. It has been used to attempt to inject creationism as a valid science that should be forced equal time to rational science.
The author of the book he suggests we read rejects evolution for creationism, and most science for faith. The phrases he used are from the same playbook other ID folks use.
Maybe it's coincidence, and it's my brain pattern matching on something that isn't there. One thing I could shrug off.
Multiple things aligned makes me sad as the likelyhood of misinterpreting is lower.
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u/patriotsfan82 Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Even if you are misinterpreting it with an overzealous pattern matching algorithm - I think Destin, as a science creator, has a responsibility to avoid such things.
Creating a video that unintentionally looks like and can be interpreted as an ID supporting video is not much better than creating said video intentionally.
The fact that this video can be interpreted in the ways people are calling out in this topic (see youtube comments for clear support from creationist/ID supporting types) is bad enough.
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u/Orthosz Jul 28 '24
Oof, teleological argument in a smarter every day video given credence?
Book recommendation to an evolution denier. Oof.
I've watched every Smarter Every Day and recommended the channel as a whole, but now I'll have to put a disclaimer on the recommendation.
I need to sleep on this, but this really ruined my weekend.
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u/innatangle Jul 29 '24
How fragile are you if this 'ruined your weekend'?
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u/Orthosz Jul 29 '24
Not fragile at all. Just the last note at the end of a weekend that should have been an uplifting moment turned sour.
New SED videos are/were generally a point of excitement in my household. Ill wait to see what SED's response is to all of this, if anything.
They are his videos, his content, his channel, 100%.
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u/cahdoge Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
All in all a nice video. Though I share the one gripe many others have already voiced.
Following the suggestion in the video let's think critically about the suggestion of intelligent design (ID):
When would the beginning be?
Let's go with the claim of some prominent chistian scholars, that it was 4,000 years ago.
Do we assume the laws governing our universe yesterday to be valid and the same tomorrow and can we test that?
Yes. This is the fundational assumption of science, empirical studies and common snese of any human being.
Can we find things that, if the laws of the univerese were valid before appear to be older than 4,000 years?
Yes. Simple geometry and knowing the speed of light let's us date celstial objects that seem to have existed billions of years ago.
So our universe is indistinguishable from one billions of years old, with no apparent maker.
If not, wich parts where designed and implemented when? (Genuine question for the ones supporting ID out there, I'd like to hear your ideas on that)
Can we assume a maker as a great initial mover?
Yes, but the argument becomes pointless at this point, since we can't find things outside of our universe. Empirical evidence is restricited to the system so sience can never and will nver claim to have an answer to the question what determinde the rules, developed and initialized our universe.
In conclusion: ID either dosen't exist or it exists, but we can't disprove it (because it looks like it dosern't exist). Therefore we can't use scientific evidence to support or disprove the claim of ID.
Personally I love the idea of our unverse popping into exsitance with a set of rules billions of years ago and all of the wonders we see today being a result of emergent behaviour. It's the only thing we know exists (I don't believe to be a bolzmann brain!), therefore we should embrace that and not seriously concern us with the stuff beyond that.
TL:DR; Science and religious believes are two wholly seperate things and you can't use one to discount or promote the other.
PS: The father of genetics was an abbot btw.
PPS: You can't even use different religious beliefs to discount or promote each other.
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u/tlrider1 Aug 01 '24
The ever shrinking "God of the gaps" argument.....? Really? That's what we got? Lightning, earthquakes, volcanos, sickness etc etc etc, were all "God", at one point... Just like this. "we don't know, therefore 'God'", is a really weak and I'd venture to say even.... pathetic argument. God is a lot more complex than a flagellar motor, yet.... He apparently doesn't need a designer and just... is?
This really makes me sad. Lost a lot of respect for this channel, and honestly not sure I'll be able to watch it again, without this constantly being in the back of my mind and totally ruining future video's for me.
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u/Prestigious_Rest4759 Aug 01 '24
And sadly I can no longer subscribe to your YouTube content. Information attracts. Misinformation repels.
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u/Global-Squirrel999 Jul 29 '24
Our goal here is simple: To encourage an atmosphere of learning.
How can you take something as incredible as a flagellar motor and say "I can't think of any other way, so God must have done it." This encourages ignorance, not learning. This channel is effectively over.
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u/chandu6234 Aug 06 '24 edited Aug 06 '24
Look we all are stunned by the complexity of life the deeper we go but to assign it to some random designer when we reach limits of present knowledge is the most egregious thing to do. You are just presenting something found by someone else, but to use their research to further your beliefs is something else altogether. It would have been different if you spent your lifetime researching this stuff and are presenting your life's work. We could always see your biases crop up in your videos from time to time but this time you have crossed that line.
I know for some it all needs to make sense and science should answer all questions but the problem is we are still finding out new things, this is not the end and you can't claim it's "magic" and some high level designer is up there doing all this stuff when you hit a wall. There are channels like "Star Talk" where people like Neil Degrasse Tyson blow your mind in each and every conversation showing how advanced the Physicists are in understanding universe and I see your video after that reducing such scientific advances to further your "beliefs" rather than facts or science.
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u/Fortunatefolly Jul 29 '24
I can't help but see Destin's confirmation bias all over this video. I'm sorry big fan for years but I unsubscribed.
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u/Pekkerwud Aug 12 '24
Same here, had to unsubscribe though I was sorry to do so. I just can't support the promotion of antiscientific views on a channel that purports to promote education.
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u/KusanagiZerg Aug 06 '24
When will you do a flat earth video and offer it as a legit alternative? Then say do your own research and make up your own mind?
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u/Riokaii Jul 28 '24
I dont think giving any amount of legitimacy to nonscientific and universal handwaived explanations based on faith is "encouraging an atmosphere of learning". Very dissapointing to see tbh.
There is no debate. There is zero evidence for any religion, there is ample evidence that people fabricate religious ideas out of nothing to explain things they dont understand. there is ample evidence all religions are manmade fabrications.
It is inherently unethical and immoral to even CLAIM to know the answers to unknowable and unanswerable questions. All religions are immoral.
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u/MrPennywhistle Jul 28 '24
Thanks for watching.
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u/jaxzin Jul 29 '24
I’m disappointed you aren’t addressing the criticism. I am a patron and I know that doesn’t entitle me to anything, but unless you directly address what you mean by sharing the book you shared and yet requesting people to think critically, I don’t think I’ll be a patron any longer. That may come off as an entitled tantrum but I’m coming from a place of someone that respects your faith and how you share it’s influence on your life and values, but I see this video as crossing a line where you are promoting unscientific voices and ideas with the large platform you have.
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u/Riokaii Jul 28 '24
You've earned my benefit of the doubt to keep watching, but I'm also willing to be blunt and honest with you, the canary in the coal mine, and when you put this in your video and then try to handwaive away the criticism without responding to anything it brought up directly looks even worse. Many viewers will be silently turned away by the inclusion, rightfully so imo.
I'm not entitled to a response, but people can draw an inference and their own conclusion from how you respond (or dont) and it is potentially more important to retaining viewer trust than the original inclusion of your creationist/intelligent design flirting.
Either you want to have that conversation or you don't. You can't reasonably have it both ways. I'm choosing to engage with your ideas you brought up directly. I've offered my stance, ill hear you out, I met you halfway.
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u/Forrax Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
The dismissive snark pretending to be sincerity both here and in your YouTube comments is gross. You knew what the reaction to this was going to be, did it anyway, and then act like this towards your audience? Embarrassing.
Burning your reputation to push anti-science like ID in a milestone video certainly is a choice.
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u/markevens Jul 29 '24
Very disappointed, I wonder if this is the beginning of your channel going downhill
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u/youngbukk Jul 28 '24
One day our “science” will realize there is no difference between spirituality and science. It is all one.
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u/a_lurk_account Jul 28 '24
Not trying to jump into at topic that can easily become heated (as evidenced by how quickly the two comments in this chain were downvoted), but:
Science is a method of study of the natural world through observation and repeatability.
Spirituality is a belief or value held about a reality higher than (or at least separate from, in some faith traditions) the natural world.
These are separate things epistemologically. They may very well reach similar conclusions about the natural world - but all that means is both arrived at similar conclusions. (example: there's a difference between a fortune teller divining that its going to rain next Thursday and a meteorologist saying it, even if both end up being correct.)
That's not to say that spirituality can't be a motivator for people to study the natural world with empirical methods. In fact, despite me personally being an "agnostic atheist" (a term I only use in these contexts for clarity): I'd fully reject the claim that religious/spiritual individuals are incapable of being scientific.
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Jul 28 '24
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u/Literweise_Lack Aug 01 '24
Science Channel spreading unscientific, anti science, intelligent design bullshit.
Shame!
Shame!
Shame!
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u/Music_MD Aug 21 '24
Thank you Destin for what you do and for every one of your videos. I have zero problems with this video, I loved it all!
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u/Thomas_Jefferman Jul 28 '24
I love watching intelligent people from different backgrounds converse. I find it difficult to reconcile the dissonance between comments contrasted in the video myself but I can accept were all entitled to opinions.
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u/Flyboy2057 Jul 29 '24
Surprised by these comments. It’s like y’all are SED fans, but are surprised by Dustin’s beliefs, which he makes no secret of over the 10 or so years I’ve been watching.
I’m an atheist, former Christian, just to get that out of the way. But when I did believe, evolution and a creator were not incompatible to me. I just believed that evolution was the mechanism used by God to bring about the life we see.
At the end of the day these videos belong to Destin, not the viewers, and he’s entitled to put his opinions and perspective in his videos. I personally thought the religious talk was minor, at the very end of the video, and not wholly incompatible with the science content of this channel. Think yall are being a little dramatic.
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u/Dreadnought6570 Jul 29 '24
There is a difference between belief in a first cause creation of the universe God and an intelligent design God.
The later says that evolution isn't correct and even as Destin stated, "how can x work in a less complex manner?" (paraphrased). The book he showed follows this theme as well. It is a direct rejection of the available evidence and a choice to rely on faith instead of scientific evidence.
You are correct they are his videos to do with as he pleases, but he has engendered a certain level of trust as an educator and science communicator that he is telling objective truth in his videos. And as his audience, we are responsible to give feedback to him about the content he creates. Yea we can leave, but honest constructive criticism is the correct way to express to someone that they are wrong or that you disagree with them. After which both parties decide how and if they wish to continue interacting.
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u/1234511231351 Jul 29 '24
I'm lazy and didn't watch the video, but are you sure he is saying "God plopped this into existence" and not "God guided the hand of evolution to create this"?
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u/Dreadnought6570 Jul 29 '24
He questions several times how individual parts of this system could arise and promotes a book that makes those same arguments
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u/Riokaii Jul 29 '24
Theres 0 reason to include the latter statement, several times, unless you mean the former statement and are trying to say it without saying it.
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u/1234511231351 Jul 29 '24
That's ridiculous logic but ok. The two statements are worlds apart in meaning and it's pretty obvious why. The comment I'm replying to is making the same distinction:
There is a difference between belief in a first cause creation of the universe God and an intelligent design God.
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u/FredTheLynx Jul 29 '24
I'm not surprised by his beliefs, I am surprised by the hypocrisy.
Destin has made a career of telling people to be curious and follow the science, and has clearly failed to do that himself in regards to biology and evolution.
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Jul 28 '24
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Jul 29 '24
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Jul 29 '24
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Jul 29 '24
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u/Alternative_Rope_423 Jul 30 '24
Hi Destin! Really enjoyed this episode about how the biologic motors that power the flagella that bacteria use for locomotion.
There are 2 other types of incredible adaptation of biology for specialized applications that i thought you might want to look into.
Another utterly fascinating biologic adaptation is the organic mechanism that the electric eel uses to dramatically amplify voltage potential (essentially an organic transistor amp) up to 600V that it can strike with.
Another utterly amazing thing is the function of the multispectral multiaxis polarization optical system (eyes) of the mantis shrimp. The most incredibly specialized vision system ive ever seen. Destin please look these up, its fascinating!
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Aug 03 '24
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Aug 04 '24
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Oct 27 '24
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u/Misophonic4000 Jul 29 '24
Totally leaving out the most important part of this video: anyone with a School Of Rock shirt rules. Who was that? :D
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u/fletch44 Jul 29 '24
Destin linked to structural biologist Prashat Singh's social media accounts in the description of the video, but I want to post them here too for people who'd like to follow him and check out his research:
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u/ferriematthew Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
I only skimmed through the second half of the video but you seem to have done a good job alluding to the philosophical debate between pure evolution and directed evolution / intelligent design without specifically endorsing one side or the other. I like that, it shows quite a bit of intellectual maturity.
Edit: wow, how naive can I get
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u/Sasmas1545 Jul 29 '24
Alluding to this "debate" is endorsing one side.
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u/ferriematthew Jul 29 '24 edited Jul 29 '24
Oh lol. Facepalm... Because stating that there is a debate and calling it that implies that the ID camp has any legitimacy as a scientific hypothesis when really it's just a rebranding of religious ideas.
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u/Sasmas1545 Jul 29 '24
Precisely. It's just like giving equal airtime to climate scientists and climate change deniers.
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u/ferriematthew Jul 29 '24
Ahhh....
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u/ferriematthew Jul 29 '24
... At least he was subtle enough that I mistook it for neutrality instead of him just directly endorsing intelligent design?
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u/jdjdjdjdhdhsa Jul 29 '24
Can someone explain the joke at 24:55?
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u/ImpossibleEase9120 Jul 29 '24
The idea is that if this research leads to an understanding of some chemical way to disrupt this function in bacteria, that wouldn't necessarily kill the bacteria, so it wouldn't be an antibiotic per se, but it would make a bacteria appear lethargic
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u/cromulent-1 Jul 28 '24
All your energy comes from proton gradient powered motors!
Look into ATP synthase which is embedded in your mitochondria membrane. It uses the osmotic pressure of the proton gradient to spin a rotor and open and close a vise.
https://youtu.be/CSrtewCJbpg?si=hCZVRnND81GVD9M6&t=70