Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kadzar]

Relevant Lindybeige rant. I'm just slightly curious. And maybe a bit insomniac.

[burningpet]

In hebrew we "solved" it by calling it "Before Counting" and "After Counting". Even as an atheist i have no problem in using Before christ and "To the year of the lord". its not like it makes me believe in jesus simply because i use the universally accepted counting system.

[Blargityblarg]

I think it's less a matter of offence and more a matter of 'why bring Christ into it when he's not universally relevant?'

[Darvi]

Much like the Ubuntu Epoch, it's basically an arbitrary moment that was picked as year zero that stuck and spread. It's not like any other dating system is less cultural-centric.

[andrea]

And besides, it is not like the common era system doesn't count from the birth of christ anyway.... it just pretends it is somehow independent from it. Honestly, I don't quite see the point. it is like painting a tunnel in a wall and expecting to go through it. You only changed appearence, not substance.

[IronyOwl]

I think it's less a matter of offence and more a matter of 'why bring Christ into it when he's not universally relevant?'

Except in this case it's closer to "let's slightly complicate things to cut out the historical connotations of this arbitrary doohickey we're going to keep using mechanically." That reads more like taking offense or being wary than not Christing everything up just for the hell of it.


Also, apparently some people use the C to stand for Christan. For those not doing so, I'm curious how the birth of Christ signaling the start of the "Common Era" is any less weird than starting up The Years of Our Lord. I'd think that'd be a step backwards as far as universal Christ-relevance goes.

[Neonivek]

No one but a militant atheist (Yay it is an OFFICIAL word now! No more do we need slang) would be actually offended.

Switching to BCE and CE was a good move when moving to a more secular society.

But then again a lot of moves like this is less because "It is offensive" and more "it doesn't fit".

[miauw62]

In Dutch it's even commonly abreviated to V.Chr. instead of V.C. (V being the abrevation of "Voor" which means "Before"). And honestly, I really don't give a fuck. Unlike most systems, you can't really SI-ize the counting of years.

[10ebbor10]

Besides, it's hilarious to know the Christ was born before 6 before Christ.

[Neonivek]

Besides, it's hilarious to know the Christ was born before 6 before Christ.

The whole thing is a bit weird because... well BC and AD means that... there must be a DC

[DJ]

I am offended by the inconsistency, because BC is English and AD is Latin.

[Leafsnail]

BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, "In the days of our lord"), taken as a pair, explicitly state that "Christ is Lord".  Can you not see why people of other faiths (particularly Jews and Muslims) might be offended by a dating system that forces them to state a religious tenet they don't believe in?  If I proposed moving to a system that explicitly states that Jesus isn't the messiah would you be OK with using it, or would you regard it as an attack on your beliefs?

Beyond that there's also the fact that year 0 was miscalculated, so there's no actual religious meaning to the system.  The only significance that 0AD carries is that the majority of the world agrees it's year zero - in other words, you could say that it's a Common Era.

[Sergarr]

In Russian, the AD and BC were transformed into "Our era" and "Before our era" respectively. I think that sound a little bit less pretentious that the "Common Era" thing.

[DJ]

In Croatian it's New Era and Old Era.

[werty892]

I'm a atheist and I don't really give a fuck. But if you think about it, it is placed at a very historically relevant time for a transition from old to new world. And no matter what you say, you cannot deny the impact that Christianity has had on history, being one of the leading causes of the collapse of the roman empire, and dominating the western world for the next 1800 years, which lead to the rest of the world being inf not converted, exposed or brought into conflict with Christian forces.