Another victory for the Sanctity of Life crowd

His clinic had been bombed, and he had been shot before. He was not pursued by just a single nutcase, but a community of people who felt he was violating God's law by providing pregnant women with the right to choose to terminate their pregnancies. So they finally got Dr. George Tiller. He was gunned down in his church--worshiping the same God as the murderer. Those who believe in the sanctity of life can breathe a sigh of relief now. Killers know that they will be punished by the righteous.

President Obama is wrong to excuse torturers

I make no secret of the fact that I have been a strong supporter of Barack Obama, yet I have no sympathy whatsoever with his policy of excusing low level torturers. I understand political expediency. If we tell government servants that they have to question their orders, then that can make for some really difficult problems for those who try to implement policies. There have to be clear lines of authority and responsibility. That is precisely why all of the Nazis that the Allies prosecuted at Nuremburg should have been let go and had their pensions restored. Or did the victors make the right decision in prosecuting war crimes?

Forget the higher ups. It is precisely the foot soldiers--those who waterboarded and confined prisoners in boxes with insects and slammed prisoners against walls and forced prisoners to maintain painful postures for hours and all the rest--who ought to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Not Dick Cheney. His day in court will come eventually. Start with the little guys. Throw the book at them. They were precisely the ones who should have been questioning those orders and quitting their jobs. They were the people who stood to suffer for disobeying orders, and they were the people who should NOT be told that it was ok to do what they were told. If we don't get those guys to balk at authority, then there will always be people in authority who will not hesitate to use their complicity. They are individual human beings who are responsible for their behavior. Like anyone caught in a moral dilemma, they did not deserve to be put in the position of becoming a party to atrocious behavior. But they were caught in a train wreck that has happened all too often in human history. And, if history means anything, it is only the little people who can put a stop to the monsters that rule over them. I say throw the book at them. Show mercy when they turn state's evidence, but don't let them off the hook completely. We have to set a precedent that individuals are responsible for the choices they make, even if those choices are tough.

What if God Disappeared?

Here are some very common arguments against atheism on YouTube. How many times have we heard these? Enjoy.

In Defense of Robots

Theists sometimes argue free will theodicy--that God permits evil in order that we might choose to obey his will freely. There is a part of this argument that I have never fully understood, and it is that for God to intervene directly in our choices would make us all into "robots"--beings incapable of making free choices, let alone moral choices. I have a couple of serious problems with this argument:

• Robots can be programmed to make free choices in principle.
• Our choices already appear to be determined by physical events inside our brains. That is, we are essentially flesh-and-blood robots.

Mainly, though, I just don't understand why God's presence would somehow affect our ability to choose to disobey him any more than a child is robbed of free will by the presence of his or her parent. As we all know, kids can choose to disobey even when the parent is glaring at them and muttering angry noises.

As for robots and morality, I leave you with Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In fact, Asimov worked out ways in which robots could violate #1. They can behave just like Christians who go to war and kill, even though God commands that they not kill. There is always the "greater good" to motivate evil.

Why I fear religion-based morality

Religion-based morality is usually grounded in the authority of a god, although there can be a more dispersed basis for that authority, as there seems to be in some Eastern religious traditions. From a Christian perspective, right and wrong conduct is fully determined by God. Without God's authority to motivate conduct, people can misbehave in any conceivable way without fear of punishment or loss of reward for good behavior. God figures heavily in their calculation of the best course of action in the future.

When confronted with an atheist, people of religious faith are understandably concerned. They now face someone whose basis for morality is largely missing. Such a person would seem to pose a worse threat to society than someone who accepts the existence of a clear moral authority and just chooses to disobey. The atheist has no guide to correct behavior except, perhaps, an intuitive understanding of what God ordains, and that is just not enough. The atheist faces no threat from disobedience other than social condemnation.

Now let me explain my perspective on morality as an atheist. The threat I face for immoral conduct is not just social, but we all face the penalty of social condemnation. I also face a personal psychological threat that is roughly the same as for the religionist. Moral rules are more like ethical rules in the sense that they are based on convention and principle. It is possible that my instinctive feelings of guilt, often based largely on empathy for others, were designed into me by a deity, but I really doubt that. More likely, they derive from the evolutionary process that created human beings as social animals. I want others to like me, and that is a powerful check on behavior. I also feel pressure to conform to social norms, even though I cannot always make sense of them on the basis of empathy or principle (e.g. "Do unto others...") I recognize instinctively that moral conduct makes me safer because it strengthens the social bonds that I depend on for comfort and survival. So there is a rational basis for moral behavior. Even though a god is not going to destroy me for misbehaving, I could lose standing in my community and self-esteem.

Now I will explain my problem with religious morality--why it concerns me that people ground morality in the authority of a deity. Gods can be capricious. They do not always have the best interests of humanity as a whole in mind. For example, some believers believe their deity wants their religious doctrine to be valued above survival and comfort. Sometimes religious law is harsh and cruel, but it is thought justified on the basis of how the deity feels about the behavior in question. That disturbs me because I regard gods (and supernaturalism in general) as grounded in pure imagination, not reality. Whether or not there is any truth to supernaturalism, it seems that people's beliefs about the supernatural can vary arbitrarily. So the moral grounding of a religious person has an element of arbitrariness that frightens me. Divine authority trumps all other authority, and it can contravene social welfare in general.

So we come full circle. I understand why people of religious faith question the basis of my morality and why they consider atheism a threat to social safety. I also see religion-based morality as a potential threat to human safety, although usually it is the case that people imagine their gods to want the same thing they do--safety and comfort for the human race.

The 'So Help Me God' Controversy

A number of groups advocating religious freedom have just instituted a lawsuit that would prevent the Chief Justice from using the words 'God' in the swearing-in ceremony for the President at the Inauguration. Naturally, this is being spun up by the press, since religious controversy is always a big draw. The plaintiffs admit that a President can insert the words in the ceremony, but the government official who swears him in cannot. Historically, the courts have taken the position that such words constitute "ceremonial deism" that serves a secular purpose.

Are the words "So help me God" valid in a secular government ceremony? Is this lawsuit a good tactic for secularists to pursue? As a staunch secularist, I have mixed feelings about it. I would rather try to persuade religious folks of the value of secular government, and I don't think that this controversy moves us in that direction.

On the other had, the "ceremonial deism" excuse strikes me as a transparent ruse to weaken the Constitutional requirement of a religion-neutral government. Deism is about belief in a God who doesn't intervene in human affairs. The term is misused here by theists, who feel that God will be more kindly disposed to us if we make every excuse to beg his help.

Solstice Sign--Good or Bad Tactic for Atheists?

I must confess to mixed feelings over the Freedom from Religion Foundation's sign in the Washington state Capitol Rotunda. Nobody detests the unconstitutional lack of separation between church and state more than I do. I understand the feelings and the passion behind it. Whenever a religion tries to use government property as a means of promoting their religious opinions, I am offended. So, if the state government is going to insist on sponsoring religious messages on government property--something that I vehemently oppose--then it only seems fair that an anti-religion group post their own message. The idea is to give Christians a taste of their own medicine, to show them the cost of using the public commons to shove their views down my throat.

Now, what is so bad about a secular sign that celebrates the Winter Solstice? This one was put up for those of us who do not want the government to be seen as pushing the idea that we ought to believe in any god, let alone the god of Christians. The problem in my mind is that most nativity scenes and other Christmas displays do not carry overt messages that one ought to believe in God. That message is somewhat more subtle. The very fact of a nativity scene on public property is a little bit of a victory dance for some Christian groups, and that is why they push for them. But this FFRF sign had the statement: "Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds." Ouch. Yeah, I believe that, but I don't want to shove it in people's faces. Especially not in the holiday season. It doesn't make people stop and think "Well, gosh, I never realized how religious messages on public property must be like for nonbelievers!" It makes them stop and think "Well, gosh, I guess those atheists really are nasty, angry people!" Object lessons are designed to make the message giver feel better, not the message receiver.

That said, I have to admit that the FFRF sign has as much right to be in the Capitol Rotunda as religious symbols. I really do, although I would rather that there were no religious messages on public property. And I'm glad that they made an issue of putting something up. I just wish that they had thought of a message that was a little gentler, a little more in tune with the holiday spirit. After all, I want people to respect my beliefs, and that means I must try to respect theirs.

The Geographical Argument

What does the distribution of the world's religions tell us? It tells us that the vast majority of people acquire religious faith on the basis of an accident of birth. What one comes to believe normally depends on place of birth and parentage. If there are gods whose influence ought to be felt by all, then they do not seem to be very effective in making their presence known to the entire pool of potential worshipers. Either that, or the gods in question simply choose to reveal themselves only to a select few, who are then charged with spreading their divine knowledge by word of mouth alone. That seems a rather unlikely scenario, given the existence of competing false religions that are spread by the same means, but a lot of people of all different persuasions seem to have embraced the idea.

Thanks to the Age of Imperialism, Christianity and Islam have grown to become the two most popular religions in the world. Like Judaism, the parent from which these two evangelical movements schismed, they posit the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient creator god that wants people to believe in his existence so badly that he punishes those who don't or, at best, fails to reward them with an everlasting life in heaven. (A tiny few even take the position that God rewards everyone regardless of their behavior.) Given the geographical distribution of religions, their god seems not to believe that all who might merit a heavenly reward ought to have an equal opportunity to win it.

The geographical argument does not prove the nonexistence of any god, but it calls into serious question the existence of all of them. If there is any religion that is absolutely true to the exclusion of all others, one could reasonably expect it to have a more diverse origin than just a single point in time and space.

Brawling monks in the Holy Land

As we approach the Christmas season, it is always worth pondering what Jesus really stood for. Would he have preferred his Armenian worshipers to have allowed a Greek participant in their procession? Would he have healed the cut next to the eye of the young Greek monk who proclaimed "We were keeping resistance so that the procession could not pass through ... and establish a right that they don't have"? So far, no signs from God on this matter. He is busy continuing to behave as if he didn't exist.

Perhaps the most senseless violence on this planet is violence inspired by religious fervor. I wonder what they have planned for Easter celebrations.

Prominent conservatives beginning to abandon Palin

It is worth noting that Parker is not alone. Other prominent conservative pundits are also questioning Palin's qualifications. These include David Brooks, David Frum, and George Will. The disastrous interview with Katie Couric seems to have started a lot of grumbling among conservatives, although there are still many who believe that she can do no wrong. And now Ed Schultz is reporting the following:

McCain Camp insiders say Palin "clueless"
Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless."

Will Palin continue on the ticket, or will McCain be forced to dump her? I can't see how he can dump her, given the huge revolt that would cause from his newfound evangelical supporters.

Keeping the Faith

My Christian friends tell me, often accusingly, that I do not want to believe in God. As an atheist, my first instinct is to say that belief is not a matter of choice. One cannot just choose to believe something for which there is no real evidence. For example, I cannot choose to believe that I have a billion dollars in my checking account. That would be a pleasant thought, but I would get into trouble if I actually believed it and tried to live as if it were true.

I am no longer satisfied with that first instinct. Belief is more complex than just having evidence to back up beliefs. The fact is that most of our beliefs are acts of faith. I believe that there is no atmosphere on the moon, but I have never been to the moon to check that out. I believe in the existence of molecules and that water molecules consist of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom, but I do not have never seen, heard, or touched a molecule. It is easy to see that people lose consciousness with brain trauma, so I believe that they lose it permanently when the brain dies. I have no proof of that, however. Finally, I believe that there are no gods, but I certainly don't have any way to prove that negative claim.

So how do I keep faith in science, but not in God? I have made a choice to believe in science and a choice not to believe in God. What drives those choices? In Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett goes into great detail about such choices in his chapter entitled "Belief in Belief". He points out that most of us probably believe in Einstein's famous equation E=MC², but most of us haven't the faintest idea of the mathematical proof or even how to go about justifying such a belief. But there is an important difference between faith in science and faith in God. Faith in science does not require elaborate effort to maintain. We do not pray to science to help us believe in it, nor do we go through elaborate rituals of bowing, kneeling, and standing in the service of that belief. Perhaps that is because we know how to verify our scientific faith to our satisfaction, but there is no satisfactory method of testing faith in God's existence.

Belief in a religious doctrine is expensive. It requires a great deal of time and effort. Faith maintainers cannot devote that time to other activities that might please or benefit them. It intrudes on their lives and the lives of those around them. It often requires them to give up some of their hard-earned wealth and to sacrifice for the benefit of others. Why go through all of that? I probably don't need to explain why. Faith has many benefits. It provides one with social approval, and it promotes cooperative social behavior. Churches usually engage in charitable services to the community, and they help people cope with their daily difficulties. Sometimes strong religious faith can even cure illness. So there is a return on the investment. There is a strong motivation to maintain religious faith, just as there are benefits to be received from maintaining faith in science.

So why don't I just choose to believe in God? That would allow me to reap the same benefits that so many of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances reap. Perhaps it has something to do with never feeling all that comfortable in crowds. In my case, though, I think there is something else other than mere standoffishness or love of iconoclasm that drives me to shun that choice. It has to do with the self-consciousness of the effort. If I could choose to believe in God, then I could choose to believe in anything. That is, I could choose to believe I was a billionaire. I could go through elaborate rituals to make myself believe that my bank statement was somehow mistaken or an effort by the bank to steal my wealth. But knowing that I could cheat my belief system in that way would undermine and cheapen all of that enormous amount of faith I have built up in everything else I believe about the world. If I could believe just anything I wanted to, then I would lose confidence in all my beliefs. To put it in Dennett's terms, I would no longer believe in belief.

Playing Two-God Monte with Christian Apologists

There can be no doubt that the Christian God has anthropomorphic qualities. The Old Testament Jehovah was more of a human caricature in that he seemed less than omnipotent, prone to anger and revenge, an advocate of tribalism, and too much like some kind of ancient patriarchal potentate. The New Testament version had a much softer image, but he still behaves largely like a person. He has emotions, thoughts, and goals. He loves humans and orders them to behave in ways that benefit human relations. He takes an interest in sexual behavior, just as any human would, and he is moved by praise from humans and pity for their plight.

Christians have a problem with charges of anthropomorphism, because it makes their god look more like the cartoonish creation that some would argue characterized the pagan gods of ancient mythologies. Those gods were too obviously made up out of whole cloth by primitive people who needed to explain natural forces in terms of human-like agencies. We no longer tend to think of natural forces as the result of imaginary beings that we can influence with gifts of wealth and devotion. So God has been cleansed of many of the old anthropomorphic traits. A modern Christian might use a male pronoun for God, but most seem to reject the idea that he is anything like a male in the conventional sense. In more recent times, a picture of God has emerged in liberal theology that is more of an essence--a Ground of Being--than a person. So allegations of anthropomorphism by skeptics are quite often countered by descriptions of God's essential ineffability--his immanence in and transcendence of our physical reality. A kind of First Cause that is beyond our comprehension or understanding.

The stripping from God of all anthropomorphic traits leaves us with a God that cannot really be argued against. It is hard to argue with the abstraction of an essence that is alleged to permeate everything and whose behavior and motives are beyond our understanding. Do you believe in the existence of things that are beyond your awareness? I don't know. There are certainly things that I will never be aware of, but what could a "thing" be that is beyond comprehension? This is the Shield--the belief that cannot be denied.

But do any of the believers stop praying because God's motives are unfathomable? Do they abandon religious morality because God maybe didn't literally appear as a burning bush and hand some stone tablets to Moses? Not usually. They still attend church and sing along with the choir. They still pray for forgiveness and praise the Lord as if God were subject to human feelings. You can't love an abstraction, and religion isn't much use if it has nothing to offer. So God switches right back to the anthropomorphic entity that serves the needs of those who worship him. You don't worship a First Cause. You worship a being that can be influenced by worship.

This oscillation between anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic deities is something that I have experienced many times in my lifetime of debating with Christians and others of faith over the nature of religious belief. It is a pretty good defense mechanism for a largely untenable belief. The God-as-essence version is the shield that defends the more vulnerable God-as-person version. The former wraps around the latter when it comes under attack, but the latter emerges to serve the believer's real needs when the former has warded off the attackers.

Daniel Dennett: Breaking the Spell

I am currently working my way through Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. If you are a Christian, you will likely have the same reaction to it that Leon Wiesletier, a book critic for the New York Times, does. I have to say that the book that Wiesleter read seems completely different from the one that I am reading. Most of Dennett's book has little to do with Christianity or Christian concepts of God. Rather, it is a study of the phenomenon of religion, and it is based on research that he undertook in support of philosophy classes that he teaches. Unlike Dawkins, in his well-known book The God Delusion, Dennett does not confine himself to an attack on Christian views of God. What has surprised me is that I think Dennett has done a far better job than Dawkins at exploring the evolutionary bases for religion in the human species. Dawkins is the evolutionary biologist, but Dennett seems the more thoughtful and objective evolutionary thinker. Perhaps it is because Dennett is not really engaged in a polemic. That is, while he makes the occasional polemic remark, he is for the most part concerned with just trying to understand what it is about religion that makes it so ubiquitous in human society.

The thing about Dennett's book is that he constantly asks the Latin question "Cui bono?" (To whom is the benefit?). This is the essence of evolutionary thinking, because evolution is design by what Dennett calls "free floating rationales". That is, there is no intentional designer with a rationale. There is just a free-floating benefit to replicators that happen to be lucky enough to be in the right place when the conditions are right. Religion is an expensive form of behavior. It requires people to devote large amounts of their time to maintain and promulgate it. Vast resources are expended to defend various competing religious doctrines. Quite often it leads to strife and warfare, causing members of the species to die off prematurely. So why would it have emerged as such a common form of behavior in human society? To answer the question, Dennett takes the view that there must be some payoff somewhere to make religion such a species-wide phenomenon. What do people get in exchange for all that effort to "keep the faith"?

There is no simple answer to this question, because evolution is always messy. There are usually many factors that come into play to support specific behaviors. Evolution is a "substrateless" phenomenon in that it always requires 3 ingredients: 1) Replication (a copying process), 2) Variation (mutation), and 3) Competition (natural selection). It is not just about DNA and genetics. There may be no single gene that causes humans to be religious, but there is likely a complex of genes that favor the creation and replication of religious "memes" in human society. For example, we are all programmed to believe in and obey authoritative sources of information. Children in particular benefit from this programming, because it favors their survival to take advantage of the experience of more mature members of the species. Ancestor worship is a form of authoritarianism, and ancestor worship seems to form to basis of many religious myths, e.g. the Gilgamesh epic. So these are the kinds of issues that Dennett analyzes and critiques in his very detailed analysis of the ubiquity of religion. I highly recommend this book, but only for people who have the stomache for provocative thinking. Dennett never tries to hide his atheist bias, but he also allows for the possibility that atheism may not be the best answer to our survival as a species.

Maliki endorses Obama's withdrawal plan

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has endorsed Barack Obama's call for a withdrawal of US troops within 16 months. This is a stunning slap in the face to Bush and McCain's 100-year stay, permanent US bases, and siphoning off of Iraqi oil revenues to pay for our stupidity. The war will end up costing us a trillion dollars, and we get nothing but a sinking economy, loss of national prestige, and the need to send even more troops to our neglected, failing effort in Afghanistan. They will be keeping their oil revenues along with the billions that we sent them in aid and promptly lost track of. We get to keep our gas-guzzling SUVs, which will also help to rebuild the Iraqi economy.

Yet Another Gap Filled in the Fossil Record

It is a requirement of science that its discoveries be continually verifiable and verified. Even the obvious must be constantly checked as if some new discovery could overturn or modify what is already known beyond any reasonable doubt. So this latest discovery of transitional fossils in flatfish does not shock or surprise any scientist. It was predictable that such fossils might exist, although it was possible that none did or would ever be discovered. Not every animal or intermediate stage in evolution is recorded in the fossil record, only those whose deaths happen to have been preserved by the sedimentation process.

In this case, the lack of intermediate fossils to demonstrates the evolution of eye migration in flatfish had long been taken as one of those unfilled gaps in the fossil record. It is precisely the existence of such gaps (although they are fully expected and compatible with evolution theory) that is constantly trotted out by anti-evolutionists as a kind of "proof" that evolution cannot explain everything in nature. Yet the existence of such gaps also provides an opportunity. No evolutionist expects there to have been any historical gaps in real history, only in the imperfect recordings of that history by the fossilization process.

The fossil record leaves us with a kind of lengthy movie of the history of life on this planet, but a movie with many missing frames. So we see that "movie" as a kind of sped-up old-time film, a silent movie where the scenes and characters jump around. Yet the time-edited film itself stands as proof that real actors once played before that camera.

Bacteria make major evolutionary shift

Since evolution takes place across generations, it is usually difficult to observe it actually happening. This New Scientist article is an excellent example of speciation, although it occurs at the microscopic level. Because bacteria reproduce and die at a much faster rate than humans, scientists can observe major shifts in their genome when they occur. In this case, E Coli is distinguished from other bacteria in terms of its inability to use citrate. Biologist Richard Lenski has now shown that bacteria can evolve into a new species under observation in the laboratory. As the article states, "Lenski's experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists."

Free Will and the Impossibility of the Christian God

It may be impossible to prove the non-existence of gods or monotheism, but it is possible to prove the non-existence of gods that are defined with contradictory properties. For example, it is a logical impossibility for an omniscient being to create beings with free will. Here is an example of a logical disproof of the Christian God.

(1) If a being has free will, then no one can know how it will choose to act.
(2) An omniscient being knows how everyone will choose to act.
(3) God is omniscient. (by definition)
(4) God cannot create beings with free will. (by 1, 2, and 3)
(5) God has created beings with free will. (by most versions of Christian doctrine)
(6) Therefore, God does not exist. (by 4 and 5)

There are several ways around this argument. One is to abandon the notion of free will, but that calls into question God's judgment that people have disobeyed his will or willfully committed sins. The other is to claim that God somehow does not know how people will behave, but that negates his omniscience. Many Christians, in my experience, simply try to deny (1), but that makes a mockery of the concept of "free will". It is reminiscent of "Hobson's Choice", the story of the legendary stable owner who allowed his customers to choose any horse in the stable as long as it was the one standing nearest to the door. The choice was between that horse and no horse at all.

It is my opinion that this logical argument is a fairly ironclad argument against belief in a very popular conception of the Christian God--one that is both omniscient and capable of creating beings with free will. However, like many philosophical arguments, it does not address the real motivation that people have for belief in a god--the desire to survive indefinitely and control one's destiny. We did not invent gods just to explain the nature of reality, although most believers use gods to explain the mysteries of nature. We really invented them in order to give us leverage against nature. Supernaturalism is essentially that--the ability to trump our natural circumstances.

Teacher Burns Crosses on Children's Arms

Christian evangelicals often complain bitterly that they are not allowed to use public schools to promote their religious beliefs. Yet many public schools still lend themselves to evangelical teachers to purvey their own brand of Christianity at public expense. Here is a report of a public school teacher who has survived 21 years in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and he has survived at least 11 years of complaints according to Lynda Weston, the district's director of teaching and learning. Finally, this man was driven by his passion to burn crosses in the arms of his students, but still there is no serious talk of firing him. Oddly enough, he is certified only to teach science. That speaks volumes about the certification process.

Murchison Meteorites: New Evidence for Abiogenesis

Creationists and those who argue for Intelligent Design like to claim that complex molecules such as RNA and DNA could not arise spontaneously in nature, but most scientists who study such matters disagree. Even the erstwhile longtime atheist philosopher Antony Flew has been taken in by this argument from incredulity, and Christians have generally been delighted with his recent conversion to deism.

Now we know that fragments of meteors that fell near Murchison, Australia, in 1969 contained carbon-based compound precursors to the "raw materials of life". Scientific American reported on this discovery in a June 16, 2008 article. Although this does not prove that life was created from similar sources, it is the strongest evidence yet that RNA and DNA could have evolved naturally.

The Age of McCain

I have to admit that I am puzzled by McCain's strategy on how to deal with his age issue. There are two recent past examples of the age problem in presidential politics: Reagan and Dole. The conventional wisdom is that Dole's age was one of the issues that killed his candidacy, but it didn't cause Reagan any serious problem at all. We all remember Reagan's swift comeback when the issue came up in a televised debate with Mondale, and that seemed to be a watershed moment for his campaign. It is also true that they showed him working out with weights and doing other vigorous physical activity. His hair, magically, never showed even a strand of grayness, and he denied that it was unnaturally colored. He wasn't a war hero, and he didn't seem very religious, but people bought him anyway. Dole didn't manage to put the issue behind him, although he was a war hero. He came to be a symbol for an aging politician, and he ended up doing Viagra commercials after he lost the election.

McCain now faces that age hurdle, but his only winning strategy so far is to trot out his aging mother to show what good genes he has. We don't see clips of him doing any vigorous exercise, as we did with Reagan. We don't seem him jogging in any parks. Instead, we see a classic rapid-response technique. They are all primed and ready to go for Obama to start making comments about his age. So, when Obama made a "lost his bearings" comment, they immediately fired back with a sharp criticism. Unfortunately, they seemed to have jumped the gun, because Obama's comment was about McCain's ethical bearings, a charge that could be leveled at any politician including even Obama himself. The quick-fire response method was honed by Bill Clinton in his successful political campaigns, so it was a reasonable thing to try. The thing is that it just reminded everyone that age is an issue, and unnecessarily so. In fact, McCain jokes about his age frequently--perhaps to try to recapture that Reagan moment when a quip deflated the whole issue. In McCain's case, however, those continual quips now serve to remind voters that they need to keep focusing on his age. Is McCain going to be able to get around this issue, or is he just going to keep making it worse?