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[OM] Mosquito Science and Metaphysics [was Totally OT - Tick Removal]

Subject: [OM] Mosquito Science and Metaphysics [was Totally OT - Tick Removal]
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:14:29 -0700
On 7/2/2011 4:17 AM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> I've heard of a priest claiming that his faith was most severely tested by 
> the sound of a mosquito in a dark bedroom, in the early hours.

Then there's D.T. Suzuki, the one who brought Zen to the West. He told of his 
time as a novice monk in Japan. He was 
having trouble maintaining his concentration when meditating. On one occasion, 
sitting out on a mountainside, mosquitoes 
kept interrupting his meditation. As he was thinking something like "I'm 
hopeless at this, if I can let something as 
small as a mosquito break my practice, I . . ." and at that moment, he achieved 
his first experience of enlightenment.

Many of his teachings throughout his life featured mosquitoes.

> The torment...
> I have offered that the simplest disproof of God involves the mosquito - if 
> all things have a purpose, as they should if created by a God then what is 
> the purpose of the itch and bump reaction to a mosquito bite?

Now that's an easy one. Requires no spiritual explanation at all. Simple 
evolution. Mosquitoes have carried deadly 
diseases for all of recorded history, and almost certainly long before that. 
West Nile Virus is the latest in our area.

Those for whom mosquito bites weren't noticeable would simply live shorter, 
less healthy lives. Those who found them 
really annoying would naturally try to avoid them, be on average healthier, 
longer lived and have more, healthier 
children. Thus the evolutionary advantage from which we suffer.

Another may be the ability to sense when the mosquito starts to drill for the 
red stuff. I've noticed that I, and some 
others I've known, often can feel, if that's the right word, when drilling 
starts, while others with whom I've been in 
serious mosquito situations are completely unaware.

That could be an evolutionary adaptation too, I suppose. Another thing I've 
noticed is that some folks seem to be 
tastier or in some other way more desirable than others. I good strategy is to 
find such people and make sure they are 
around when you are in mosquito country. I think I'm about a 4 or 5 on the 
tastiness index, higher than Carol, but not 
really preferred if anything better is available.

> I will allow the critter her bloody due. I will even accept the right of 
> malarial parasites to exist as a divine creation. But the itch has no good 
> purpose that I can divine. It is torment without purpose or reason and a 
> serious flaw in a creative purpose that must be, by definition, perfect.
> :-)

Oh, it is. It is. ;-)

(R)evolutionary Moose

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