I just read this in a booklet about evolution:
Mutations can be:
- harmful
- beneficial or
- neutral
That is a good example of an informed statement that is blatantly false. The general idea is of course right, and it is something to keep in mind if you want to learn about evolution.
However, there are not exactly three possible labels for each mutation. We cannot take a particular mutation and classify it as "harmful" and nothing else or definitely "beneficial". And we rarely can claim it to be absolutely "neutral".
Unless you define what those terms mean, the statement has hardly any information value at all. Beneficial for what? For the individual? For the group? In the current environment? In any environment? When the individual is young or when he grows old? For males or females?
Sickle-cell anaemia is caused by a mutation that also happens to make the person immune to malaria. Is that "beneficial" or "harmful"? Both. If you live on Greenland, it is a bad mutation, but if you move to Congo, that same mutation can help you.
One could go out on a limb here, and say that each and every mutation has some beneficial and some harmful value. Sometimes, it is almost entirely beneficial and sometimes almost entirely harmful, but most of the time somewhere in between.
There are admittedly "neutral" mutations. Those are mutations that have absolutely no effect whatsoever.
The point, however, is that we have a tendency to put absolute labels on things, and think using those labels. Was the war in Iraq "good" or "bad"? Is the lady in the at the news stand down the street "nice" or "nasty"? Are state subsidies to collapsing banks "good" or "bad"?
The answer to all those questions, if one thinks about it, is "neither". Or "both". A bit of this and a bit of that.
This does not mean that it does not matter. It matters a lot, when you are leader of a country and a major bank collapses. You have to choose: either you save the bank or not. Just do not think that the decision will be "right" or "wrong". It will be mostly right or mostly wrong. It may help some people long term, and harm other people short term. The decision will be partly good and partly wrong. The task is to figure out which decision is more good and less bad.
But if you describe the world in absolute terms, you describe a world that does not exist.
