Why in the Hell did God Create the Mosquito?

                When you can’t find the answer in the Bible the pat answer is, “God works in mysterious ways.”

                When God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden into the “dark and dreary world,” they were confronted  by briars and cockleburs.  Instead of sitting around drinking mint juleps and munching on figs in the Garden of Eden  Adam and Eve were compelled to earn their keep by the “sweat of their brows.”  I wonder if that is when God came up with the mosquito idea.  He was so pissed off at Adam and Eve that He must have thought and thought late into the night before he came up with such a wicked little critter. 

                Now God has been portrayed by priests, prophets and popes as a loving, benevolent Fellow who only has the best interest of his human creations in mind.  The story is he created us anthropoids in his image.  But he also created rattlesnakes, black widow spiders and scorpions.  Why?  To torment Adam and Eve?  When Eve ate that apple and then talked Adam into to eating it, was it really that bad – so bad that God extended the curse, not just to the third generation but every consecutive generation?

                Mark Twain was critical of God for making the fly.  At least the fly, although a pest, has some purpose while in the maggot stage.  The maggot consumes dead flesh and like the vultures, eagles, beetles and hyenas, they help clean up the dead carcasses lying around.  But I’ll be damned if I can think of a useful purpose for the mosquito unless it was to torment man.

                Who hasn’t been picnicking or camping in the mountains and hasn’t heard that distinct, unique buzzing of that little critter, the mosquito?  The buzzing is a warning but we don’t always hear it.  Suddenly you feel a stinging on your arm, you look down and there she is with her proboscis sunk deep into your flesh.  Instinctively, you slam your free hand down on the busy little bugger, when you remove your hand there the smashed carcass lies in a tiny puddle of blood – indicating that she had drank her fill.

            The above diagram shows the difference between the male (on the left) and the female mosquito.  The male feeds on nectar, the female does also, but only females need blood.

            Mosquitoes not only suck blood but they carry diseases.  Malaria is the most common, West Nile Fever is probably next.  But Yellow Fever is probably the most deadly. 

            Malaria is caused by microscopic protozoa which is a parasite that attacks the red blood cells.  And the malaria parasite is just one of many that is transported by insects like ticks and flies. Now it seems to me that God had to work overtime in creating the insects and the symbiotic relationship between the microscopic parasites, also His creations, and human beings.  For a God who allegedly has the best interest of mankind in mind, he does indeed work in mysterious ways – because the mosquitoes, ticks and flies can’t tell the difference between the righteous and the sinners and don’t seem to give a damn.  A thirst for blood is the driving force.

            Entomology is the study of insects. The guys who study insects, called entomologists are scientists.  After years of study and sharing their findings they have come up with a reasonable number of species of insects that inhabit this world – the figure being 900000.  Of the total insects they say there are 2500 species of mosquitoes, 40,000 species of spiders and 150000 species of flies, gnats, midges etc.  All of these species have a unique life cycle of egg, larva, pupa and adult.  And there are millions of insects in each species.  That’s a lot of insects, not to mention 900000 insects crawling around Noah’s Ark. 

            Now we Homo sapiens are suppose to have a special relationship with God.  He created us out of the dust, at least the male, and took a rib from the male and made the female.  He has allegedly told us how we should live and how we should worship Him for unless we abide by His instructions, or laws, we will be punished.  The punishment might come in this life in the form of disease, floods, hurricanes, earth quakes, famine etc. – or it might come in the afterlife in a place called Hell.  Furthermore, if we disobey Him or His messengers, He may give us over to the buffetings of Satan, or the Devil, a supernatural guy like God who delights in tormenting us humans. 

            How do we know all this?  Because God has selected popes, prophets, priests, oracles, visionaries, imams and other extraordinary humans to preach and rule over us.  The trouble is each of these special messengers, God’s alleged Seers or pernatural guides, tell a different story and as a result they have warred against each other, each claiming God was on their side.  Now what do you make of all that?  God works in mysterious ways.

            Of all of God’s messengers, from the Sumerian God, Enlil; to the Egyptian God, Osiris; to the Greek God, Zeus, king of the Gods; and to the Roman God, Jupiter – there are two men that have stood in behalf of the Christian God, Jehovah, that I find particularly peculiar, queer, or aberrant. 

            They are John Calvin and Joseph Smith.

Portrait of Calvin by Titian

            John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination dictates that God has already decided who will, and who will not be saved – that is, who will go to heaven and who will go to hell.  This decision was apparently made before each of us was born and there is nothing we can do about it.  No amount of good works by the unlucky guy who is predestined to go to hell will matter.  Now, I find Calvin’s God very mysterious and hard to understand.  And I find it hard to understand those that believe Calvin.

            Joseph Smith is the author of the Book of Mormon and founder of Mormonism, or what is now called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Joseph also preached predestination but did not make it a condition of exaltation.  What Joseph made a condition of exaltation was plural marriage.  And he said God would destroy those women who interfered with their husband’s quest for plural wives.

             I don’t know which of God’s creations is the weirdest, the mosquito or His plural marriage mandate.  And if John Calvin was a messenger of God I can’t figure out why he didn’t know about the plural marriage revelation.  It seems Martin Luther was aware, at least he was okay with plural marriage for he didn’t interfere with the Anabaptists experiment with plural marriage.  God certainly does work in mysterious ways.

            But the most disturbing mysterious works of God that puzzles me the most is why he didn’t intervene in the many wars fought between us Homo sapiens.  He was in the position to save millions of innocent lives. Take the American Civil War for example.  It was primarily fought over slavery.  Both sides, the North and South, partitioned God for His help.  Preachers on both sides evoked God blessings and cursed the other side.  And even though the South lost the war it had the Bible on its side.  The Bible, which many believe is the express word of God, or at least  inspired by God, is okay with slavery. And there has never been to my knowledge anything from God to change that fact. The Bible still sanctions slavery, in other words it is still on the books but the South and the British have obviously decided to discontinue the practice.  Now that’s a contradiction that is really mysterious.

              But of all the wars fought by God’s creations, the Second World War was the most destructive and most deadly.  Scholars estimate that between 60 and 78 million people perished, most of which were non combatants, meaning innocent civilians, to the disturbing tune of 40 to 52 million.  (According to Wikipedia)

            Except for the Japanese most were Christians.  Where was God all this time?  Did he have a hard time deciding which side to support?  The Pope didn’t seem to have much trouble because compelling evidence shows that Catholic Priests supported the Nazis and even helped some escape to South America at the war’s end.  Now that’s mysterious.  But even more mysterious is the Biblical account of Moses and the Exodus which clearly states that the Jews were God’s chosen, yet He allowed the enemy of the Jew’s to scatter them around the world.  He allowed the Christian nations to discriminate against the Jews, using them as scapegoats.  And He allowed the Nazis to exterminate 6 million Jews, and didn’t lift a finger.

            Now I don’t want to get on the bad side of God because He is supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful.  Nor do I want Him to send that devil-guy after me.  The priests and pastors claim The Almighty is also all-loving, kind and patient, so I hope he is patient with my blundering naïve way of sorting out His mysterious ways and why He created the mosquito.  There must be some truth to his existence because survivors of the holocaust and survivors of debilitating injures and disease still praise him, and grovel before His symbols.  It doesn’t seem to matter to those survivors that God never created a car, an airplane, computer or cell phone;  and for that matter He never invented a vaccine for the diseases caused by His parasite carrying mosquitoes, flies and ticks. And he never invented an insecticide to protect the apples and oranges from His voracious little bugs.  He left that up to man. So am I being blasphemous for wondering way?  Cause in the Middle Ages the penalty for irreverence was death and I’m not quite ready to die.

            I’ve thought and thought, pondered and mused over this godly conundrum and this is what I think must have happened.  The reason God didn’t intervene during the Crusades, the Holocaust, or when his priests and pastors were putting witches to the torch in Salem – the reason was, He was so busy creating insects that He didn’t notice.